


Proving Ground

by KLaxAddict



Category: Pocket Mortys, Rick and Morty
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, First Time, Homelessness, Honestly a much happier story than the tags make it out to be, Incest, M/M, Origin Story, Seduction, Stripping, Sunglasses as a coping mechanism, Survival Sex Work, Teen Sex Worker, There goes our boy: off to become the best little whore he can be, Underage Drug Use, Window Sex, diner food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-06 03:06:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15877215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KLaxAddict/pseuds/KLaxAddict
Summary: Morty is 14 when he runs away from home, desperate to get away from his life, and above all, Rick, at all costs. But when Rick follows him to Miami, he realizes that a new life means fighting for the things he wants, even if he hadn't known he wanted them.A Miami Morty Origin Story





	1. Part 1, Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains depictions of underage sex work by a runaway teen. None of the sex in this fic is non-consensual, but survival sex work is fundamentally dubious in consent by nature. If this upsets you please do not read. I would like to thank @nev_longbottom for her invaluable help with research for this fic. In her words: 'Finally, those years of working with homeless teenage youth in Miami pay off.'
> 
> This story is also broken into two parts, of two chapters each. The first half involves 14 year old Morty running away from home and making his way to Miami. The second half involves Miami Morty as we know and love him trying his best to seduce Miami Rick. There is an ongoing plot between the two, but if you wish you can read just the second half for Miami fun-times.
> 
> And of course, thank you to my artists @Wawas and @GonsTeddy for their fantastic artwork! This Big Bang was a pleasure with you guys.

The waiting room smells of dust mites, grimy plastic, and hobo urine. Morty can't bring himself to care; he's experienced some of the worst hell-holes in the galaxy over the last couple months. To him this place just smells like freedom.

Freedom he’s not sure he can afford, honestly.

The straps of his backpack dig into his shoulders as Morty stares up at the prices for a ticket out of Michigan. He's already sold his PlayStation and laptop, even delayed his plans by a couple of weeks until after his birthday; just in case he got any expensive presents or cash he could add to his fund.

In the end all it got him was a belated Superman card from Grandma and Grandpa Smith, with a check that got him a whole $14.14 closer to Los Angeles. It’s still barely enough to hit Salt Lake City.

He's been nursing vague dreams about palm trees and roller skating on Venice Beach, bikini girls with tan lines and long blonde hair. But the most important thing right now is to get as far away from here as possible.

Anywhere but Utah.

“Can I help you?” The woman behind the counter seems bored, not even looking up from her monitor.

A nagging, cringing little voice that sounds too much like his father whispers in the back of his head, telling him it’s not too late to turn back, to walk home before anyone misses him, or (more accurately) before anyone grows frustrated with the minor inconveniences caused by his absence.

Morty thought he’d shut that voice up for good earlier when he’d forced down a panic attack crossing the threshold of the automatic doors of the bus depot, telling himself once he did there was officially no turning back.

It had been there before that, when he’d walked out the door this morning. No one bothered to comment on the duffel bag he was carrying along with his backpack, like the poster boy for Buzzfeed’s article on ‘Top Ten Warning Signs of Impending School Shootings by Socially Maligned Teenage White Boys’.

And even before that, it had been shrieking away when he’d started packing his bags at night for the first time in earnest, stashing away protein bars from the kitchen and slipping $20 bills out of his mom’s wallet every time she blacked out.

He wonders how far he’d have to go to get that stupid little voice to finally disappear for good, to make going home never a viable option. He’s determined to find out.

“I-I'd like a ticket to Orlando,” he winces as he stumbles over his tongue, trying to look and feel older and more confident than he is.

She barely glances at him, typing away on her computer. “Round-trip or one way?”

“One way.”

Morty pays, ignoring the knot in his stomach as he hands over nearly all of his savings. It loosens slightly when he clutches the corrugated paper of the ticket in his hands, shuffling away towards the waiting buses.

Disney World is just as good as Disneyland anyway.

 

* * *

 

To say Grandpa Rick is the reason he’s running away from home is inaccurate. Or at least severely incomplete.

Morty had been doing okay. Honestly.

Not the ‘okay’ of typical adolescent angst and acne-fueled hormones, or the ‘okay’ of the severely depressed, unable to feel or process any emotions around him, just… okay.

School sucked, but he’d never been that great at it, either academically or athletically, so his slowly dipping grades weren’t that much of a change.

Socially he’d always been a disaster, so the lack of any real friends was status quo, and it honestly prepared him for being a romantic failure too. If he couldn’t get anyone to pend half an hour with him since third-grade recess, there was no reason for him to actually expect someone to do the same with the added disincentive of him trying to awkwardly hold their hands with sweating palms.

The only real hit he was feeling there was Summer starting to pull away from him more and more. It hadn’t been so bad when he’d been in middle school, they’d still been decently close. But now that he was the visibly unpopular geek wandering the halls of the same high school she attended, he barely managed to get her to look up from her phone to acknowledge his existence, let alone her connection to him.

Mom worked too much, and Dad didn’t quite know what to do with him, so their family time together went mostly to staring at repetitive police procedurals on the TV for an hour, then starting to bicker as Mom finished her fourth glass of wine, while Morty excused himself to go upstairs and masturbate, wondering what the lack of a pair of noise-cancelling headphones was doing to his developing verbal abuse kink.

And then he’d get up and do it all again. It was fine.

But then Rick showed up on their doorstep, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the shoulder and tersely nodding out a ‘Hello, Sweetie’ to his Mom before asking if she could patch him up. Morty, Summer, and Dad had all watched in amazement as Mom flipped through a dozen intense emotions, from elation to rage, as she stitched up the hole in Rick’s shoulder, sitting on the dining room table and swigging from the vodka she’d used as disinfectant, gazing silently and seemingly impassively around the house from behind the sunglasses he never removed. Eventually he fell asleep on the cot in the storage room upstairs, and just never left.

Looking back, Morty thinks the impact Rick had had on his Mom was a good precursor.

Rick was a catalyst. An explosive fucking enzyme reaction, stirring up and exciting everything before making it that much more volatile.

It was great, at first. Morty couldn’t remember the last time life had been so exciting, the last time Mom had smiled so much. Summer had pulled him into her bedroom the next night to gossip about everything they’d managed to put together about Mom and Grandpa Rick’s past, and they’d ended up talking until nearly dawn.

Even Dad had been in a good mood, magnanimous about offering his wife’s ‘poor homeless father’ a place to crash at no expense until he ‘got back on his feet’. That lasted until the inventions started showing up, followed by the aliens at the front door at odd hours. Rick didn’t say much, or interact much with the rest of the family besides a few quiet words to Mom at breakfast, but eventually he must have snapped because Dad came out of the garage one day stark-white.

The first time Rick had pulled Morty aside one evening and taken him through a portal, on an adventure to another world, was the best night of Morty’s life, hands down. Even if it had ended with them being chased by monsters and bug-people for a little while. Rick had shot them quickly, and muttered a ‘Don’t worry about it, Morty’. And he hadn’t.

Morty saw a shining future opening up ahead, one he’d never allowed himself to consider before. Sure, having his grandfather for a best friend was kind of sad and weird, but who cared? Everyone already thought Morty was sad and weird.

Mom was happy, Summer was talking to him, even just a bit, and Morty’s days were full of possibility and adventure.

But then Dad lost his job, and his fights with Rick started getting a lot more vocal and frequent. Which led to fights between Mom and Dad turning a lot more vocal and frequent as well. Mom went from one bottle of wine a night, to two, and then three or four on weekends. Dad spent more time locked in his study, building lopsided models he insisted on showing off at the breakfast table before anyone was allowed to eat.

Summer eventually lost interest in the old man who lived down the hall beyond complaining about the various sights, sounds, smells, and reduced bathroom time she had to put up with the few hours a day she emerged from her room. ‘Grandpa Rick’ became just another embarrassing feature of her family, and Morty’s newfound place by his side another reason to avoid making eye contact with him at school.

Morty’s grades stopped wavering and started to plummet with the reduced sleep and other demands on his time Rick placed on him, pulling him in and out of school with barely a word before portaling them off to some distant planet for whatever he needed that day.

But it is true that Morty might have handled all of that, even willingly accepted all of that, if it hadn’t have been for Rick himself.

For all that Rick demanded Morty’s time and assistance, he held him at arm’s length, sometimes literally as he dragged him around the universe like a burlap sack. Morty tried being chipper, he tried being quiet, he even tried being sarcastic and nihilistic like Rick was, but that lasted about two sentences before the silence staring back at him from behind mirrored sunglasses shut it down. He’d smiled and done things with Megaseeds he didn’t know he was capable of. He’d sat for hours outside seedy bars while Rick conducted sketchy business. He’d missed his chemistry midterm to help Rick swap out Dad’s model glue with something noxious and sweet-smelling.

Despite Morty’s best efforts, Rick still seemed to pay him as much attention as the screwdrivers he asked Morty to hand him. As the weeks past, he even started to envy his Dad for the tirades he occasionally managed to inspire out of Rick. The creeping suspicion started to snake its way into Morty’s brain that he just wasn’t worth the trouble. Rick didn’t care enough to yell at him, let alone praise or befriend him. He was just a useful pair of small hands that lived in the nearby vicinity.

He’d grown kind of desperate in the later weeks, acting out in increasingly outrageous or clingy ways, trying to squeeze some kind of affection or attention out of Rick like trying to wring blood out of a stone.

Exactly 37 days ago, he’d been sitting in the garage with Rick for hours after dinner, chattering mindlessly about a live dance/art performance they’d seen on their last trip off-world while Rick met one of his contacts. The line of tension in Rick’s shoulders had grown tighter with every hour the project he’d tinkered with for days refused to cooperate.

“And the way she separated her body into three different parts before reconfiguring them with the other guy, d-does that make her part of him now? Or vice versa?”

Rick’s ubiquitous sunglasses had been removed an hour or so ago, perched on the workbench as he pinched at the bridge of his nose and periodically huffed small sighs of annoyance. Morty had pretended they were for him and not the converter he’d reassembled twenty times since lunch.

“Or – Or are they a totally different person now? Does that make it a snuff show? Or a porno?”

Rick slammed his hands down on the workbench so hard that Morty could feel it rattle underneath him several feet away.

“Goddamn it Morty,” Rick growled, turning to face him, frustration and cold anger burning in his eyes.

“Why won’t you take a sledgehammer of a hint and _fuck off!”_

Morty had quietly slid off the workbench and walked upstairs, past the ‘keep out’ sign on his sister’s door and the ‘keep out or else’ sign on Rick’s, to his own room. Once the door was closed, he’d sat on the edge of his bed and begun to cry.

No, not cried. Sobbed. Great, heaving sobs that tore at his chest and throat, even as he struggled to keep them silent out of some misplaced sense of pride or concern for the other occupants of the house. His ears popped and the house faded away into the sound of his own heartbeat and rasping breathing, and his hands shook independently of the erratic rise and fall of his chest. He cried for hours. Or maybe only a few minutes. But when it was over he felt hollowed out, and empty.

Morty looked around his room, at the untouched pile of make-up homework, at the cleats on the wall of the soccer team he’d been cut from last year, at the door that led to a full house that seemed to hold nothing for him.

Why didn’t he just fuck off?

Rising to his feet, he'd moved to his closet and pulled down a disused duffel bag.

 

* * *

 

Morty stands dumbstruck in the middle of the scorching concrete, staring up at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom. An endless a stream of tourists and their children break around him, jostling his bags and heightening his paranoia about pickpockets and snatch-and-grabs by the seemingly benign middle-aged woman in the Minnie Mouse ears and too much pink lipstick.

The sun is beating down much harder than he ever expected from the mild Midwestern summers he’s used to, but it feels like freedom after two days and nights curled in a bus seat. Even for a decently small teenager, his back and legs had started to cramp and spasm after only a dozen hours or so. He hadn’t realized how used to running and other forms of action he’d become during his few months with Rick.

Fortunately he’d also picked up the skill of sleeping just about anywhere, any time, and he’d done his best to cram as much shut-eye into those two days as he could, the straps of his duffel bag wrapped firmly around his wrists and his backpack tucked safely beneath his shins. Morty had grown used to staring, half-bored, out the window of Rick’s ship, and he’d firmly told himself that the cornfields of Ohio and freeways of Virginia were no match for the galaxies and nebulae he’d turned his nose up at in the past for a little shut-eye.

There is a definite difference though, no matter how he tries to rationalize the adrenaline out of his system. He’s never had this kind of autonomy before, the ability to be the one to decide where he wants to go and to see that decision translated into the reality of the landscape around him. He finds himself fascinated by new kinds of gas stations, changing license plates, the slight variations in the predominance of trees, all things Morty has never given a passing thought to on family road trips. Still, he knows that cramped or not, he might not have a warm, dry, and relatively safe place to sleep in the coming days, and he manages to sleep fitfully at least half of the time, jerking awake in a near panic every time the bus’s brakes screech to a stop for gas or new passengers.

After three or four of these pit stops, he starts to recognize his first real mistake. Along with the apples and the pack of protein bars he’d stashed in his bag, Morty had brought a few bottles of water, but they disappeared within a day on the bus. Looking around, he noticed the more experienced passengers all carried large glass or plastic water bottles, lining up at the water fountains at each stop. Morty tries to refill his own bottles, but the plastic warps and falls apart, leaking over the remaining contents of his bags. He’s forced to start buying new bottles at each stop, watching his meager savings drip away in $2-5 increments. By the time he steps off the bus at the Orlando station, he’s lost almost as much as he’d budgeted for a week’s worth of food and other necessities.

Even if he hadn’t botched that though, he would still be in the same situation he’s in now. Staring at the ticket prices for a day pass to Disney World, and realizing he never would have been able to afford it. It costs more than the bus he’d taken to get here, and even if he hadn’t thought this far ahead, Morty isn’t stupid enough to blow his wad on a handful of hours wandering through a park he’d only make it a fraction of the way through before having nowhere to go. God only knows how much a bottle of water costs in there.

Morty blinks up into the Florida sun and swallows around the lump in his throat, pretending the stinging tears in his eyes are brought on by UV rays and not the horrible, gnawing feeling of regret in his stomach. This is how far months of planning, what could arguably be called his best efforts, got him. 500 feet away from the Magic Kingdom, with an imposing Disney security guard that may as well be an army of Gromflamites for all the difference it makes.

That little voice pops up again, strengthened by hunger and the rising panic gripping him in the swarm of people.

‘ _It’s not too late to buy a ticket home,’_ it whispers. _‘They might not have even noticed you’re gone.’_

Resolve fills Morty’s lungs as he steps into one of the forming lines. He’s not going back. Even if the only reason he’s doing this is to remove the temptation to give up. There are worse ways to throw away $200.

No sooner than he’s made the decision, Morty feels a level of peace and excitement settle over him, the same way it had the first night he’d decided to leave home.

A split second later, he feels a hand land firmly on his shoulder, and his stomach sinks. He waits for the cloud of booze, the threatening squeeze, the portal to form under his feet, depositing him back on the oil-stained concrete of the garage he’d spent so much time and effort putting behind him… but it doesn’t come.

Morty turns, and instead of slim, pale fingers he sees a well-tanned hand with a gold Rolex flashing off a broad wrist. The man attached to the watch lets him go when he meets Morty’s eyes and smiles. ‘Hey there, sport. No need to get so jumpy, you were just off in your own little world.’

The man has his hands raised in mock surrender, and bleached white teeth sparkle out from behind his laugh lines. Realizing his own hands are clenched into fists automatically, Morty relaxes them and reflexively smiles back tightly.

“S-sorry. Is there something I can do for you? I’m guess- I guess you weren’t asking about the time?”

The man laughs, and Morty finds a little of the tension draining away as he listens to the sound. He looks to be either mid-forties, or that particular brand of well-preserved fifty-something that Morty’s been noticing since he got off the bus this morning. He has green eyes, salt and peppered brown hair, and a light beige linen suit that manages to look both casual enough for their setting, and professional enough to complete the distinguished look he has going.

“You’re a little spitfire, aren’t you? What’s your name?”

“Morty.” The teen’s name is out of his mouth before he has a second to think better of it, and he tries not to wince at his mistake.

“Nice to meet you, Morty. I’m Robert.” The hand that had landed on his shoulder is extended again for a handshake, and Morty shifts his bags to accept it.

The man nods towards the bags on Morty’s back. 

“Backpacking? A student, I’m guessing?”

Relieved at the easy answer, he nods and stammers out an affirmation.

“Well, Morty. I was supposed to be taking my niece to Disney World today, but I think she had a few too many with her friends last night. She was meant to meet me here half an hour ago, and she isn’t answering her calls. Would you like her ticket?”

Morty boggles at the offer, struck speechless by the ludicrous piece of luck, but a piece of cynicism ingrained by months with Rick yells at him not to be an idiot.

“N-no offense, but what’s the catch?”

The man- Robert, chuckles again, and winks.

“No real catch. I remember being a kid with more Kerouac dreams than dollars in my pocket at one point too, as incredible as that may seem. I’ve already paid for the ticket, and you look like you could use the luck today.”

Reaching into his linen jacket, Robert pulls out a ticket from the inner pocket where Morty has only ever seen a flask reside, and hands it to him.

“Since I already made the drive though, I am going to stay and wander the park myself. You’re welcome to join me, if you like. That ticket comes with Fast Passes, and I’ll even throw in lunch if you can stand a couple hours of conversation with me.”

Morty’s stomach rumbles audibly at the mention of food, and Robert smiles kindly.

“Sounds like ice cream and a hot dog or two might be in order too, huh?”

Clutching the VIP ticket in his hands, the extravagant entrance price printed in bold numbers across its bottom, Morty takes a deep breath and nods.

“I’d like that. Thank you, Mr- Robert.”

Before he knows what’s happening, Morty is whisked through the gates of the Magic Kingdom, a VIP band on his wrist and a hand on the small of his back, guiding him through the throngs.

He barely has time to get a good look around at the mass of sights and sounds around him, bright colors and the smell of fried food circulating everywhere before he’s directed into a small room near the entrance. Pulling out an impressively metallic looking credit card, Robert swipes open a large locker and gestures for Morty to remove his bags.

“Uh- I, I can just carry them...”

“Nonsense,” Robert replies, that placid smile back on his face. “We’ll be walking for miles today, and you already look hot and exhausted as it is. They’ll be perfectly safe here, I guarantee it.”

Reluctantly, Morty places his duffel bag in the locker, before stepping away.

“Your backpack too, surely. We wouldn’t want you to get pickpocketed.”

Morty tries to come up with a tasteful way to express that he’d really rather not, though it was kind of the man to think of this and pay the ridiculous locker fee for the day, everything he currently owns in the world is in these bags, and letting go of the straps of his backpack feels harder than the entire process of leaving home.

“If you’re worried about carrying your wallet, you needn’t be. Everything today is my treat, I assure you.”

Slowly, with the smell of churros filling his head, Morty takes off his pack and hangs it on a hook above the duffel bag. The plastic door of the lockers swings shut, and Robert locks it, wrapping the orange spiral key chain over his wrist beside the VIP pass and the Rolex.

Turning to Morty, he grins, and claps his hands together. The key jangles lightly in the linen of his jacket sleeve.

"Now, what would you like to do first? Ice cream, or roller coasters?”

 

* * *

 

Hours later Morty collapses onto a bench, pink-cheeked and flushed from the heat and the beginnings of what will either become a flaking sunburn or an uneven tan. Robert sinks into the chair with a good deal more grace. Whether it’s the dignity provided by his age, or the fact he’s accustomed to the mid-afternoon heat, he still looks cool and calm even under the layers of his suit. 

Morty’s starting to think he might be sick, whether from oncoming heatstroke or the massive amount of junk food he’s shoved down his throat. He’s always had a bit of a sweet tooth, and his new situation has him eyeing the calorie count next to the menu items for the first time in his life. Having the metabolism of a teenage boy had never seemed like a curse before. Still, he’s manage to shovel down an Olympian amount of hot dogs, ice cream, caramel corn, waffle crepes, soda, and oxymoronically Mouse-shaped elephant ears.

He’d been more than a little nervous every time he ordered something, glancing up at the ludicrous mark-up prices in the park and back down at his shoes as he stammered it out. But each time Robert had simply smiled at him, and asked ‘is that all?’ in a mild and pleasant tone that Morty couldn’t detect any sarcasm within.

It has honestly been one of the best days of his life. Robert seems content to go wherever Morty wants within the park, to stand in any line, to sit through any ridiculous ride that won’t get his shoes wet, even to wait patiently as Morty gets his picture taken with his favorite princess. It takes a while for the teen to relax, honestly. Besides the guilt every time the guy pulls out his wallet, even though he can clearly afford it, Morty isn’t used to spending time with someone without some form of verbal abuse, or neglect, or… Purpose.

That’s what it is. With Rick, even within his crumbling family, Morty knew what his role was. He was the assistant, the organic pre-assembled robot that passed tools and carried things through customs, or he was the human shield between the rest of his family at dinnertime fights, helplessly trying to play peacemaker and nodding feebly in agreement with whichever family member he ended up with after the fact. 

With Robert, Morty doesn’t know what he’s doing here. And it seems to get worse with every minute that passes, every dollar that racks up on that sleek credit card. He tries to tell himself that it’s just paranoia, that Robert had told him what he was doing here. He’s a replacement, a temporary surrogate younger family member, here to be doted on in their absence. A reverse whipping boy. It’s just his lack of comfort, his lack of experience, being _wanted around_ that’s making him nervous.

But the hollow ring to that explanation only grows as the hollow pit in Morty’s stomach fills and the glitz and glamour of his surroundings start to fade. Is Robert just humoring him? Pitying him? Is is possible he’s called the cops already and they’re on their way, just can’t find them in the vast complex of the park?

The turmoil in Morty’s stomach starts again, and Robert clasps a hand on his shoulder.

“Well my boy, it’s been an exciting day but I think it’s time for me to start to bring it to a close.”

Nodding, Morty rises to his feet, awkwardly trying to think of a way to say ‘thank you’ that he hasn’t worn out already, but the movement proves to be too much too quickly, and he sways on his feet.

Looking concerned, Robert steadies him by the shoulders and looks around for the nearest air-conditioned gift shop.

“Let’s get you out of the heat, shall we?”

Morty lets himself be guided into the cool dry air of the shop, and Robert starts to talk with clerk behind the counter about getting him a bottle of water.

Another $3.50 plus tax to add to his debt to this stranger. Bringing it to a grand total of $467.53 for the afternoon. He doesn’t even know Robert’s last name.

Feeling a little bit better despite himself, Morty stands up straight and looks around the brightly colored, meticulously organized gift shop. He bumps a display as he passes it, and while he’s busy righting it, he finds himself rolling a water bottle between his hands. It's blue plastic, with a screw on top that forms a handle to carry it by and stickers depicting characters from Lilo & Stitch printed around the sides. Exactly the kind of thing he should have thought ahead to bring with him when he ran away from home.

He’s still holding the bottle, on the verge of a panic attack when Robert reappears, holding out a bottle of over-chilled Dasani. It’s always Dasani in theme parks.

Morty blinks at the bottle in the older man’s hands, slow to reach out for it and not quite hearing what the other man is saying.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said, ‘would you like that?’” Robert repeats, still holding out the Dasani with the slightest smile and that incomprehensible patience.

Morty takes the Dasani from him and looks at the grinning sticker of Stitch in a hula skirt. There are a dozen appropriate responses. ‘Why would you do that?’ ‘Why are you doing any of this?’ ‘No thank you, you’ve been generous enough already,’ anything more intelligent than what actually pours out of Morty’s mouth, which is:

“But you just bought me a water bottle.”

Robert shrugs, and snaps the tag off the empty bottle in Morty’s hands before he can react, turning towards the cash register again.

“Then I’ll get you another one.”

Five minutes later, souvenir in hand, Morty follows Robert like a lost puppy to the entrance where they’d arrived. The sun is starting to set, and the flow of families and tourists in and out of the gates has slowed considerably by the time they make it back to the entrance of the locker room.

“Will you be staying longer, or leaving as well, Morty?”

Morty balks, remembering that once Robert left he'll be on his own again, without a coattail to follow around. Where was he going to sleep? The park was open for a few more hours at least, he could find somewhere cool and work that out…

“No, I think I’ll s-stay...”

Nodding sagely, Robert slings open the door to the locker room. “Quite right, if I was younger I’d stay for the fireworks myself.”

The room is one of the few that isn’t extravagantly air-conditioned in the Florida sun, and the concrete walls trap the heat inside like a clay pot in an oven. Perhaps designed to get people in and out of the park as efficiently as possible, not lingering in the room where the most they can spend is the cost of a full day jumbo locker rental.

A harried looking mother and toddler brush past them as they enter, but other than that the muggy silence is all that greets them. The locker they’d chosen was towards the back, near the end of the rows that filled up at the beginning of the day, in the space for the extra-large lockers designed for families, or in Morty’s case, carpetbaggers.

As they round the corner, Robert pulls back his sleeve and reveals the orange bungee cord of the locker key.

“Well, I suppose this is where we must part ways then. I must say, it’s been a pleasure to spend the day with you, Morty.”

The key remains on the older man’s wrist, firmly lodged above his watch.

“And you?”

Morty looks up, distracted. “I-I’m sorry?”

Robert leans in, placing a hand against the lockers above Morty’s head and smiling again. Not the placid, calm smile of the rest of the afternoon, but a conspiratorial, rakish grin.

“Did you have fun today, Morty?”

Oh.

 _Oh._  

The cliched nature of the situation he’s found himself in after less than three days on his own hits Morty out of left field as he realizes what’s going on, wracking him with sudden, bone-deep _relief._

He understands now. He understands what role he’s meant to play, the simple thing that’s meant to clear the nearly five-hundred dollar debt he’s racked up over the course of his Disney World adventure. It’s so simple. So clear.

Taking a deep breath, Morty lets a good couple of years of adventurous porn addictions guide his actions as he bites his lower lip and tries his best to look up through his lashes.

“I-I really did, Robert. Thank you.”

Taking a stab at what might have attracted the man’s interest based on things he’s seen, Morty plays up his stutter and natural inclination to shrink into his shyness.

“I-is there, s-something I can-”

Robert’s eyes look as big as dinner plates, his smile wider than it’s been all day.

“I-I’ve never done anything tha- never done anything like this before,” Morty confesses. And it’s a more honest statement than it feels in the moment. He really never has done anything like this before, certainly not with anyone but his own hand and an overactive imagination.

But at the moment it feels like he’s stepping into someone else’s skin, just for a little while. Someone more confident and in-control of the situation than he would be, even if that someone is pretending not to be.

Robert’s hand comes down to cup his face, and the smile softens like butter.

“Of course, sweetheart, I won’t push you.”

Morty smiles back, and lets a little of his deepest nerves show, just enough to sell it. He’s gotten so good at controlling his emotions around Rick, for fear of mockery or worse, indifference. The easy, open way he can manipulate Robert’s emotions is almost intoxicating. 

Tanned, manicured hands slide under his shirt and turn him to face the lockers. He’s almost disappointed, but it’s probably for the best. Who knows how long that facade will hold up.

His skin tingles and warms, and he lets an all-too natural moan slip out from between his lips as a hand unbuttons his jeans. 

The man behind him freezes for a moment, and Morty stops suddenly, realizing he’s been on a bus for days, and walking around in miserable, sweat-inducing heat after that. Maybe there’s no way that-

But Robert just mutters something under his breath and leans in, whispering in his ear.

“You have to be quiet, sweetheart. If we get caught here...”

He’s right, but the tone of his voice is the first time Morty’s ever felt the veneer of his control crack, and it’s fascinating to think that he’s the one to have caused it.

He keens in the back of his throat, a higher, quieter sound that earns him his first proper curse from the polished man behind him. 

Something warm, and velvety, and slightly sticky rubs against the back of Morty’s thigh, and he braces his hands against the rough plastic doors of the lockers and shoves back against it.

The hot, muggy breath against his ear is almost indistinguishable from the claustrophobic air surrounding the rest of them, but Morty feels more alert and in-tune than he has since he stepped off the bus and first stretched his aching legs. 

A few minutes pass like that, and he hears a small groan and a bit-off sibilant ‘ _fu_ _ck_ ’ before something thick and hot hits the back of his leg in three small spurts.

Morty stays where he is, ignoring the fact that he’s half-hard himself, despite the sweat and chemical smell of the lockers around him, until he hears the sound of an expensive belt lacing and buckling back into place.

He turns around, and Robert looks as pristine as ever, except for a faint tinge on his cheeks that anyone else could attribute to the sauna-like conditions in the lockers. 

Nodding perfunctorily, he pulls the locker key off his wrist and tosses it to the teen, who catches it automatically, his jeans still wedged wetly around his knees. Before Morty can say anything, he straightens the cuff of his sleeve and begins strolling towards the exit.

“See ya round, kid.”

Morty watches him go, making sure no one enters after he leaves before wrapping the bungee cord around his own wrist and starting to waddle awkwardly towards the sinks outside the locker room bathroom. He cleans himself up with paper towels and water as best he can before pulling his jeans back up, and stares in the mirror, trying to catch a glimpse of the person he’d been a few minutes before.

Seeing nothing, he fills his new water bottle and walks back to unlock his worldly goods.

 

* * *

 

Morty lays his sweatshirt down on a trampled patch of grass by the man-made lake, approximately where the fireworks are supposed to be in a couple of hours. Tucking his backpack under his head, he lies back and lets his eyes slip closed, listening to the chattering noise of the park around him.

The sun has finally set, and with it the stifling heat and humidity are beginning to fade away. As it dissipates, he can feel the exhaustion starting to sink insistently into his bones, as the days of bus travel, hours of running around the park, and pounds of greasy fair food all start to weigh heavily.

The successes of the day are already starting to feel far away, despite the fact his small pile of bills is undiminished at the bottom of his bag, his stomach is full, and that he’s made it to the heart of the 'Most Magical Place on Earth'.

What is he going to do now? He hadn’t really had any plans beyond making it as far away from home as possible, hadn’t really expected to be able to get this far if he was honest. It should hurt more than it does, losing the last part of himself that thought his family would care enough to stop him, to drag him back kicking and screaming, even if just for the purposes of keeping up appearances.

The smooth plastic of his water bottle knocks pleasantly against his thigh, and Morty tries to breathe calmly with the warm evening breeze.

He has made it this far though. Achieved all his goals, even though it had seemed almost impossible. And it had been easy, almost, once he set his mind to it properly. He just has to aim higher now. Dream a little bigger. And then figure out what to do from there.

No sooner has the thought crossed his head it seems, than he’s being startled to alertness by the sound of explosions and screams.

He tucks and rolls before he realizes what he’s doing, looking around for Rick and cover, in that order, before he realizes where he is and what’s happening.

The sky is pitch black now, and another firework screams through the air before exploding in bright pinks and blues above them, reflecting beautifully on the water’s surface and drawing another excited cry from the dozens of people around him.

_You fell asleep. Great job, Morty. Really fuckin’ smart._

Standing up, Morty grabs at his bag and sweatshirt, checking nervously to make sure everything is still there. He stops shy of counting the roll of bills once he sees them curled at the bottom.

Pulling on his hoodie, he starts moving his way through the crowd, keeping his eyes low. The shirt doesn’t call out his high school by name, but he feels like it might as well. He feels smaller, more vulnerable after dark, more obviously underage and unattended. Cinching the hood tighter and white-knuckling the straps on his backpack, he keeps himself from jumping at every burst of sound and color, each responding gasp from the crowd.

He feels better once he’s made his way clear of the throng of people, letting his breathing slow and forcing his hands to loosen their grasp.

_What now?_

Morty sees a group of huddled figures by the water fountains across the path, just in the edge of the shadows from the cheerful streetlight. Everything from their posture to the faint glow of a lit tip and the smell of pot practically screams ‘teenage rebellion’, or at least something close to it.

A couple of them are also sporting large bags, and Morty remembers his first lie of the day. He’s passed for a gap year backpacker once today already, he can do it again.

He fumbles for some of that confidence from earlier, and tries his best to imitate small pieces of Rick’s bravado on particularly dangerous ‘gun, drug, and milk runs’, ignoring the sweat that’s pooling down the back of his neck.

_‘Robert’ knew damn well how old you are and you know it too who the fuck do you think you’re trying to fool little boy-_

“H-hey!”

Wincing internally at the waver in his voice, Morty keeps his head up as he walks up to the group, feeling their eyes turn towards him with slightly veiled hostility and suspicion.

“What’s up, man?” One of the guys with a backpack and a puka shell necklace straight out of 2002 says slowly, looking him up and down with a joint still hanging casually from between two fingers.

“Not too much,” Morty replies lamely, almost glad at the distant thunderous crash of one of the final fireworks displays and the approving cheer of the crowd.

“I just thought,” he gestures at the group, “It kinda looked like you guys were doing the backpacking thing too, f-figured you might know a good hostel around here for the night.”

The suspicious looks fade a little, but don’t vanish.

One of the girls frowns at him. “Don’t you have a phone? Yelp exists, y’know.”

Grinning his most charming, definitely-not-queasy smiles, Morty shrugs and rubs the back of his neck.

“I did, but y’know…”

_Even I’m not stupid enough to take a GPS tracker with me when I go on the run._

Puka shell nods understandingly. “Fuckin’ prices are insane man, who needs ‘em.”

Morty chuckles and waves at the joint, “Yeah, there’s way better things to spend a hundred bucks a month on, am I right?”

That earns him a small, but genuine laugh from his audience. Pot jokes to stoners may be an easy route to take, but fuck if he won’t take it.

To his mild surprise, the joint gets passed around the circle to him, and he nods gratefully as he brings it to lips and tries not to choke like the pink-lunged newbie he is.

“Well man, it’s almost 10 pm,” One of the other guys says, checking his watch. “None of the hostels are going to accept you after that.”

Morty feels his heart sink, and tries not to let it show as he breathes out his pathetic cloud of smoke.

“Oh shit, that sucks.”

Ignoring the second part of ‘puff puff pass’, he hands the joint off to his right, feeling his heart sink as he starts to consider a night of walking through the streets of Orlando.

“Tell you what though,” Puka shell says casually, “We’re all going to drive back down to Miami after this. Ellie’s got a friend who goes to the U and they’re throwing a pretty sweet party tomorrow night we’re gonna crash.”

This comment sparks a small cheer of whoop and hollering within the group, and Morty grins along.

“Sounds awesome.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence when he realizes that no actual invitation had been extended, and the ghost of Rick’s voice whispers in his ear.

 _Gas, Grass or Ass, Morty.  Guess you’ve already decided which of the three you’re specializing in…_  

“I-uh… I don’t have any weed of my own right now, but I’d be happy to give you the cash I was going to spend on a bed for gas money if you have a spare seat.”

Puka Shell’s face breaks out in a wide grin, and he picks up his bag and shrugs it on easily.

“All right, dude. Let’s go, shall we?”

As Morty follows them to their unironically Scooby-Doo style van in the parking lot, he realizes none of them have asked for his name.


	2. Part 1, Chapter 2

Morty’s first hangover was about a month after Rick moved in, brought about when Rick had disappeared into the back of a dive bar on some planetoid that doesn’t even have an atmosphere beyond the parking lot.

It was blisteringly hot, and the smell in the air was what Morty could only assume was the wonderful co-mingling sweat secretions of a dozen different species. And after about half an hour, he’d gotten desperate enough to help himself to a yellow liquid simply labeled ‘non-toxic for all carbon-based lifeforms’.

It hadn’t tasted that bad, kind of like flat soda mixed with just a dash of Worcestershire sauce, but he’d only allowed himself to drink one glass, knowing the odds of it being alien breast milk or fermented jizz were higher than absolute zero.

By the time Rick finally stumbled back to the front room, Morty had been dancing topless on the bar, throwing his whole body into the strange, electronic drums that seemed to be emanating from the floor tiles, sweat dripping ecstatically from his hair as the crowd cheered and matched his rhythm.

He doesn’t remember anything after that, but Rick hadn’t bothered to say anything about it the next day, just left a couple of puny aspirin by the side of the toilet for Morty to find as he heaved his guts out in the morning, his head pounding so hard he was genuinely concerned something had laid eggs in it that were trying to hatch their way out.

Rick had just strolled past the bathroom door, pausing to watch the teen’s shaking form for a moment behind his ever-present shades before taking a deliberate swig from his morning flask and walking away.

Morty’s second hangover comes on a Sunday morning in the blindingly sunny living room of an off-campus sorority at the University of Miami, or as he’s learned it’s more commonly called ‘The U’.

Instead of the obnoxious chirping of birds outside his bedroom, this time Morty is awakened to skull-pounding pain and nausea by the almost-concerningly loud snores of one of his new ‘friends’ on the floor.

Gingerly moving his way out from the arm slung over his back, (her name was Eva? Ava?), Morty slowly manages to pull himself to his feet, wandering in the direction of the bathroom, and anticipating the horrors he might find there.

The party Morty had crashed the crashers for turns out to have been, or at least to have become, and all weekend affair, moving from one house to another when supplies of food, liquor, and clean towels run low at each location. While a bit of an exhausting whirlwind, Morty’s learned a decent amount about how to fit in.

No one seems to mind if you crash on their couch, or floor, as long as you were a good party guest the night before. Being a good party guest seems primarily to involve not getting too drunk, not offending the girls, not bogarting the weed, and being enthusiastic on the dance floor.

He’s also learned how to talk to people, or at least drunk girls and high frat bros. A couple of drinks and a slightly better second attempt at getting high with a bong, and he’d loosened up enough to just smile and respond naturally.

Nobody knew him here.

He wasn’t the moron with terrible grades, the weird kid who pissed himself in class and was asleep half the time when he actually did manage to show up to class.

He wasn’t defined by Rick, or his older sister, or his mom showing up drunk and shouting to the PTA meetings. No one knew his dad had once put him in a terribly ill-conceived commercial in diapers when he was seven years old as a ‘placeholder to show the client’ that made it to air.

Instead he was the mysterious hitchhiker, the guy that all the girls wanted to dance with, the kid with the hilarious self-deprecating stories about helping the time he ‘helped his uncle smuggle weed over the border’ that went ludicrously wrong.

He has a whole new city to explore now, full of beaches and sunshine, and not a single person who knows the name ‘Morty Smith’.

Finding the bathroom blessedly empty, Morty stumbles in and closes the door, considering just washing his face and using some communal mouthwash, but deciding not to give up an opportunity for a hot shower.

His jeans are smelling a little worse for wear after almost a week, but he doesn’t want to trade them out for the only spare pair he has in his bag yet, though he’ll probably grab a fresh t-shirt after his shower.

Morty strips off his shirt, idly thinking about making finding a cheap laundromat one of his first tasks in his new exploration of the city, when a flash of color in the mirror stops him short.

Cautiously, he steps back, and pushes his jeans further down his hips.

In place of his boxers from last night, he seems to have acquired a pair of lacy blue-green panties. They’re exactly his size, but then again so are most of the petite girls in the sorority house.

Examining his reflection, he notices the way they curl around his hips, showing off his slightly too-prominent hipbones. He’d never considered that attractive in any way before, they’re just the result of failing to eat from stress or exhaustion one too many times, but with the lace covering them, just hinting at the shadows they cast, they look… enticing.

A sharp thud shakes the ceiling above him, and Morty shoves the panties off along with his jeans and socks, ignoring the way the lace feels across his skin when he yanks them off a little too roughly.

There’s movement in the house above him now, and Morty hurriedly showers, washing everything he can with the cheap 2-in-1 floral shampoo in the corner.

He feels a little calmer, a little less like he’s intruding when he gets out and towels off. Nobody has yet banged on the door demanding entry.

Morty throws his dirty t-shirt under his arm and reaches for his jeans, pausing when he sees the crumpled lace still resting on top of them.

He could just leave them here… he has no idea where his boxers ended up, probably flying up a flagpole or on one of the girls asleep in bed upstairs, but he could also go commando for a little while, he does have clean pairs of boxers in his bag, and a new three-pack is what, four dollars?

There’s a creak on the stairs beside the bathroom door, and Morty makes a snap decision, pulling on the panties and shoving his legs through his jeans at record speeds.

He walks out of the bathroom and heads for the kitchen, pulling his bag down from the cupboard above the fridge where he’d stashed it to recover a fresh shirt.

A tired wolf-whistle behind him makes him jump, and groan as the sharp noise shoots through his temples like a bullet.

“Sorry,” comes a hoarse rasp. The girl at the counter looks like she’s in as rough shape as he is, half-bent over the sink with a mug of coffee in one hand an a cigarette in the other.

“I don’t wanna be up either, but I have an econ midterm tomorrow that I have to pass or I’m fucked. You in the same boat, I’m guessing?”

Morty pulls his shirt on and nods slightly.

The girl stubs out her cigarette in the sink and gestures magnanimously to the coffee pot in the corner before turning to retreat back up the stairs.

“Help yourself then. I’ll see you next time.”

Muttering thanks, Morty slings his backpack on the floor and pours himself an extra large mug with a layer of sugar half an inch thick. Still grimacing at the bitter aftertaste, he pulls open the fridge in search of cream.

The fridge is stuffed, mostly with various drinks and condiments, but one of the drawers is filled with deli packages, bags of sliced meats and cheeses.

Looking around the empty house, Morty unzips his backpack and starts methodically filling it. Swiss, cheddar, turkey, ham, roast beef, a pack of tortillas, a pair of old apples, a banana on the counter… he even throws in one of the three half-empty bottles of mustard.

Standing, he finds his shoes in the mountain by the door, and laces them on. Face-down on the mountain, drooling into a set of size four slingback sandals, is Puka Shell. Morty has somehow managed to go the whole weekend without learning his name, just his entire life story, opinions on Puerto Rican girls, and thoughts on the latest ‘My Little Pony’ movie.

He stands to head out, but hesitates again when something flashes in his vision. Puka Shell’s money clip is sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans, the metal glinting in the morning light.

Head pounding, mouth tingling with a film of cheap mouthwash and cheaper coffee, stolen lace panties on his crotch and stolen food in his bag, Morty leans down and deftly plucks the money clip from its place and slides it into his own jeans pocket, turning and walking down the front steps of the sorority into the sunshine.

 

* * *

 

The next few weeks in Miami are some of the best of Morty’s life. He spends the days wandering the city, through air conditioned malls and department stores to stare at the lavish clothes and furniture on offer downtown, and taking walks through the richer neighborhoods to critically eye the McMansions.

His jeans and t-shirts prove miserable after a few days, and he ends up selling his backpack and clothes for a few bucks to a consignment shop before turning around and rummaging through the clothes bins at the cheaper thrift store down the street. He finds tank tops and pair of shorts in his size. They’re hot pink booty shorts, but they’re only fifty cents.

Besides, everybody wears those colors here, and modesty seems to be considered either antiquated or impractical for the heat.

He starts buying bags of lollipops from the dollar stores and keeping them in his pockets, his shoes, behind his ears. He’s always had a bit of a sweet tooth, and having something in his mouth to suck on all day helps with the hunger cravings. Between that and his trusty water bottle he only needs to spend money on one real meal a day.

For the most part he keeps himself from pickpocketing, but he walks close to groups of people and eavesdrops on their conversations. Half of them are in Spanish, and he practices repeating the basic phrases he can pick out with the musical lilt that his Spanish 101 teacher never had.

He meets a few other street kids, and they teach him the other basics he hasn’t figured out.

Which shelters are the best when the weather turns sour, where to shoplift with the best odds of not getting caught, how to spot and avoid the truancy patrol that keeps an eye out for kids that look under 18. Apparently they collect any they manage to catch at a warehouse to complete repetitive math worksheets all day. Morty thinks that last part is a joke until he spots a truant officer throw a kid in a squad car with a joke about multiplication tables. He becomes very careful to avoid the cars in the future.

A couple of the other teen boys he meets have long hair, painted nails, and cheap jewelry hanging from every available surface. At first he thinks it’s a quirk. Then a local fashion. One night he gets up the nerve to ask about it, and one of the boys, Liam, starts laughing.

“It’s for the strip clubs, dude.”

Morty blinks. That was absolutely not what he was expecting.

“You dance then? T-that’s cool.”

Shaking his head, Liam takes a swig of the bottle they’re passing between themselves and hands it back.

“No, the strip clubs here have a policy. They waive the entrance fee for cute girls. And anything that’s cute enough and girly enough,” he winks and gestures at himself flamboyantly, batting his eyelashes.

“You can get in, have place to put your feet up for a couple hours, eat yourself silly on the buffets. A lot of the guys do it.”

Morty holds the bottle and considers this thoughtfully.

“Huh.”

“You should try it, plus you might get yourself a little extra _attention_ if you know what I mean.” Liam playfully knocks his shoulder against Morty’s, and he blushes.

“I-I don’t think I’m the type for that. I mean… I’m-I’m not really... attractive…”

Frowning, Liam pulls his face towards him and assesses him critically.

“Don’t sell yourself short, you have good bones, nice eyes, and you’re starting to rock a tan like you were born to it.”

Nearly dropping the bottle, Morty jumps to his feet and starts to walk off.

“I-I’ll think about it.”

Later that night he walks past a strip club, the lights and throbbing music from inside echoing as a man walks out, laughing and fumbling for his keys.

The bouncer eyes the man with suspicion, but lets him go, and smiles slightly at Morty as he walks past, eyes fixed firmly on the ground.

Morty’s hair is starting to grow out, but he doesn’t cut it. He thinks it makes his face look softer.

 

* * *

 

After a week Morty stops jumping at every sound. He doesn’t see his Mom rounding every corner, or hear his Dad’s voice in every unexpected radio announcement.

But it takes another couple weeks to stop hearing portals forming behind him and Rick’s quiet ‘you’re-in-trouble-now’ growl in his ear just as he’s drifting off to sleep, slamming his eyes open as adrenaline floods his system and his breathing goes fast and shallow.

But that eventually subsides too. Most of the time.

 

* * *

 

He quickly learns that he can’t sleep on the beaches at night, that’s the quickest route to getting pulled in on a vagrancy charge. So most of the time Morty ends up sleeping in whatever little patch of shade he’s able to find during the days. He digs a hole in the sand beneath his head to tuck whatever he’s carrying and the key to the locker at the train station with the rest of his worldly goods, then stretches out and does his best to look like a lazy sunbather with the rest of the crowd.

He always startles awake after a couple of hours, whenever a horn honks or someone walks a little too close for comfort. He’s never been the best sleeper, and a few months with Rick all but trained him into living with constant sleep deprivation from adventuring or avoiding nightmares.

On the hottest days one of the other teens will buy a motel room, someplace that only stopped renting by the hour because of changes to vice laws in the 90’s, that doesn’t blink at customers paying in crumpled bills with a fake ID. Word will spread, and for a $5 entrance fee Morty spends the day with twenty other kids sprawled across two queen mattresses in air-conditioning that smells like mold watching fuzzy reruns on Cartoon Network.

Those are some of the best times, full of the easy camaraderie and crude jokes of an army platoon, but they aren’t Morty’s favorite.

His favorites are the nights.

He crashes a couple more college parties, but the cheap beer, Top 40 Playlists, and pizza starts to get old after a while. He limits himself to once a week at any school, and only shows up for the food and to score a free buzz.

But most of the time Morty spends the nights walking through the parts of the city that still have people in them. His new habit of eavesdropping has quickly turned into a bit of an obsession for people-watching. Everything, everyone, in this city seems so vibrant, so colorful and alive. It feels like it shouldn’t be as fascinating as it is, he’s seen bazaars with hundreds of species, spent nights in intergalactic drunk tanks, but somehow that just makes the diversity of humans that much more incredible.

He starts by walking downtown, past the laughter and burbling noise of the restaurants and bars. The outdoor patios are full of colorful drinks and young couples. Morty walks past and picks out the good dates from the bad ones, the groups of friends from the coworkers after a long day.

If there’s anyone particularly interesting somewhere he’ll stop in from time to time, buying a basket of fries or a milkshake, snickering as he takes in the details of strangers’ sex lives and workplace drama.

But even as he immerses himself in someone else’s life for a little while, Morty knows it’s just a warm-up. It’s just a game, to eat and drink as slowly as he can, to give himself somewhere to be, something to do, as the clock ticks and the night wears on. He can feel his excitement rising as the sky starts to fade, darker and darker, the fluorescent and neon lights of the city starting to burn brighter against the backdrop, making the city buzz with its own electric energy.

It had taken him less than a week to find them. He spent a few nights wandering the streets, trying to stick to the places he’d mapped out already by the day, looping in circles. But one night one too many patrol cars shied him away from his usual route, and he took a detour into the industrial district by the docks instead.

It wasn’t a place he’d checked out more than once before, the daytime was full of nothing but office parks and warehouses with a continuous stream of eighteen-wheelers moving in and out. He stuck out like a sore thumb, especially during business hours. But at night, he reasoned, it would be deserted. Completely quiet. He might even find a safe spot to take a nap before dawn.

It wasn’t deserted at all.

There was a sea of cars almost a quarter mile long, filling the parking lots of every warehouse and office building, and spilling over into the streets. A dim pink glow was reflecting off the whitewashed concrete buildings in the distance, and Morty could feel the slightest of vibrations shaking the pavement beneath his feet.

People started to appear in ones and twos as he approached, before turning into a sea of bodies, laughing and talking amongst themselves, all wearing vibrant colors and a with manic shine in their eyes.

The warehouse at the end of the lane was apparently a nightclub. Or maybe an underground rave? Morty had never been certain of the distinction between the two, but as soon as he got near enough he knew he’d found his new obsession.

It wasn’t the people-watching opportunities that captivated him, or the safety in numbers that came with being a part of a crowd in the late hours, it was the _music_.

It leaked through the thin walls of the warehouse like a sieve, rushing out through every window and door in mad, thunderous torrents. It sank into the ground beneath Morty’s feet and made it shake, forcing the very world around it to bends to its rhythms.

He hadn’t realized, until he heard it, how much he’d missed music. Without his phone and computer he had been surrounded largely by silence since he left home. It had been a nice change, he had begun to associate music largely with blaring his headphones against the sounds of Mom and Dad fighting downstairs, but after a while the quiet had started to remind him a bit too much of the empty spaces between Rick and himself in the ship or the garage, stretching on uncomfortably with no end.

Maybe that was why he’d started listening in on strangers, clinging to the scraps of their lives he could eavesdrop in on and parroting it back to himself later, trying to recreate accents and singing along to the scraps of songs he’d heard floating from car windows at stoplights.

Whatever it was, Morty felt the last piece of himself he’d inadvertently left behind when he stepped through the door to that bus station slot back into place in his chest. He felt whole, and utterly alive in a way he couldn’t remember feeling.

And so he danced. In the alley beside the warehouse, he pressed his hand against the wall as the tempos blended seamlessly from one song to the next, feeling the vibrations travel up and down his spine. He lost himself in it, lost all sense of time and place, of being Morty Smith, the homeless runaway, the great Rick Sanchez’s ex-sidekick, the weird missing kid that was probably only remembered as a missing person’s report back in his hometown.

And when the music stopped, and the lights snapped from spinning neon pinks and blues to energy efficient glaring white through the windows, Morty came back to himself, gasping and soaked in sweat, exhausted and more blissfully empty than he’d ever been.

The dark of the sky was starting to fade into its own set of pinks and blues, a pale, calm imitation of the ones that had cradled him all night, and he walked on shaking legs a few blocks to an abandoned dock. He collapsed onto the salt-soaked wood and watched the sunrise, knowing with a certainty that had been eluding him that he had made the right choices.

He goes back every night now. There are other clubs, other raves, but he always ends up returning to that warehouse by the docks. Beth and Jerry were never religious, but Morty almost thinks of that alley as his baptismal site. His pagan worshipping ground.

If only he knew what he was worshipping. Freedom, probably.

It’s a Saturday night, and the line for the club is out the door and wrapping around the sidewalks impatiently. Morty earns some dirty looks as he winds through them that are only prevented from turning into outraged shouts when he clearly turns away from the front entrance for the alleyway. It’s early still, probably only about 11 o’clock, and the alley is all his. No couples furtively fucking in the shadows, or small groups of twos and threes snorting lines of coke.

This is Morty’s favorite time of the week.

Closing his eyes, he starts to sway gently, trying to get a feel for the music. He’s picked up a little bit about the different types of music they play, mostly from people leaving the club complaining, but he still has no ear for picking out the DJ’s by style, or the differences between dubstep and trap, house and trance music.

It doesn't matter. He can dance to anything.

Whoever is playing tonight keeps making annoying announcements across the P.A. system, trying to hype up the crowd for the long evening ahead. It all sounds distorted and muffled to Morty through the walls, and he tries to filter it out, focusing on the bass line, and pressing his hand to the drain pole on the side of the building, trying to feel it out.

He finally manages to find it, keeping his palm flat on the pole as he drops low with the bass, gyrating slowly. The song speeds up, but he doesn’t chase it, staying with the underlying rhythm, knowing it will eventually come back.

His head drops back against the wall of the building, and he breathes out, feeling centered for the first time all day, as the side door to the club slams open and a gaggle of girls stumble out, bursting out the unmistakable laugh of youth and intoxication.

“Oh my _goooodddd_ ,” a redhead in a sequined yellow halter top crows victoriously, “Look at him move!”

Morty freezes, straightening up awkwardly but flashing the girls a smile.

The group surrounds him immediately, caging him against the wall.

“Seriously,” the blonde in a blue minidress agrees, “Where are all the guys who can dance like that inside?”

Two of the women are already pulling cigarettes out of their handbags and sharing a light, while the remaining girls watch Morty as intently as three or four drinks a piece would allow them.

“Aw, why’d you stop, you’re good!”

“Are you coming in, cutie? You should dance with us!”

Swallowing around the dry, hot lump in his throat, Morty shakes his head.

“I don’t have an ID.”

Snorting, the tall brunette takes a drag on her cigarette.

“So you just come here?”

“I get it,” her friend says, pocketing her lighter. “The music at the under-21 clubs sucks donkey dick.”

Standing a little taller, Morty shrugs neutrally. It’s always easier to let people fill in their own blanks.

“We could totally sneak him in,” the redhead crows, “They know us and nobody looks at the crowds of girls going for reentry.”

The brunette eyes Morty critically. “He’s a little…”

In the thrift store pink shorts and a silver tank top Morty looks like the poster child for twink weekly, and he knows it.

“Short?”

The blonde claps excitedly, “I have spare heels in my car! What size are you?”

“Um… like a six?” Morty tries to remember, gazing down at his ratty sneakers.

“Men’s sizing, yeah? Glo wears a size seven and a half, that’s about right.”

Nodding excitedly, ‘Glo’ tugs on the redhead’s arm, pulling her in the direction of the parking lots.

“We’ll be right back!”

The two women smoking cigarettes watch them go, shaking their heads fondly.

“That bitch is gonna eat pavement and take Mia down with her.”

“You’re the one who poured tequila shooters down her throat like it was going out of style.”

Shuffling awkwardly Morty considers leaving. He’s not caged in anymore, and it is still early enough he could make it to one of the other clubs in the area with plenty of time left to dance for a few hours. This plan is more than a little half-assed, and even the more sober of the girls don’t seem confident in its execution.

Then again, the stakes for potentially getting caught are a lot lower for them.

The song inside changes again, moving to a deeper, rocking rhythm that reverberates through the open windows above Morty’s head and sets his teeth on edge.

God, the possibility of getting to feel that music at its epicenter though, to experience it from the the center of a crowd… that might be worth the possibility of getting caught.

The brunette stubs out her cigarette and reaches for another one, offering the open carton to Morty as she does.

Fuck it. He’s gotten this far on impulsive, risky decisions.

Morty takes a cigarette and lights it with a quiet ‘thanks’.

“So what’s your name?” the other girl asks, flicking her own half-finished cigarette behind the dumpsters.

“Morty.”

He winces a little. For all that he’s gotten better at lying, he still hasn’t learned how to give a fake name. It’s not exactly like it’s the most common name in the phone book.

The girl seems to read his stumble as something else, and wrinkles her nose in agreement.

“Yeah, that’s a little old-fashioned. So what do you go by? Mort? Mo?”

“Mo-mo,” the brunette grins beside her. “Definitely Momo.”

Shrugging, the teen takes a long inhale of his cigarette. He’s been called a lot worse.

“We got ‘em!”

‘Glo’, who Morty now suspects is properly called Gloria, and Mia come running back up the alley, out of breath and pink-cheeked.

Triumphantly, Glo holds up a pair of silver, sequin-covered pumps. They have to be five inches tall if they’re an inch.

“They even match your tank top-”

“Momo,” the brunette interjects, passing her newly lit cigarette to Mia, who accepts it gratefully.

“Oh my fucking god, that is the cutest fucking name I have heard all week. It suits you.”

Morty eyes the heels with skepticism.

“I don’t know if I can walk in those…”

“The way you were moving when we came out, you can walk in anything, gorgeous.”

Feeling somewhat ridiculous, Morty toes off his socks and sneakers, stashing them behind the dumpster before toeing into the towering sequined stiletto.

It fits like he’s Cinderella, and he straightens up to find himself at eye-height with the other girls. He takes a few teetering steps before getting the hang of it. Heel, toe, heel toe, keep an eye out for the grates and potholes. Got it.

“Okay,” he says, looking back at the delighted, and somewhat dumbstruck faces behind him.

“Now what?”

Getting into the club ends up being easier than Morty expected as the girls herd around him, presenting their hands in unison with his to show the sweat faded and smeared club stamps that match the lick-and-stick job he now bears.

Once they’re inside though, the crush of bodies around them intensifies tenfold, enveloping them in mass of heat and sound and movement. The lights that he’s grown used to seeing from the windows and doors are spinning and dancing with the best of the club-goers, casting the entire scene in a writhing mass of color. Morty thinks absurdly for a moment, that this must be what the inside of a volcano must be like, just before it erupts.

Before he can take more than a fraction of it in though, he’s being tugged along again, along one of the far walls, away from the dance floor and bar.

A door swings open, and when Morty blinks again, he realizes he’s in the women’s bathroom, being directed to the sinks.

“W-what’re you doing? I’m not- not supposed to be in here.”

“Momo, you’re not supposed to be in this whole damn building,” one of the girls supplies reasonably.

“But if you’re going to join girls’ night out, we’re not going to play by halves.”

The girls are moving with almost military precision now, wetting paper towels and dumping the contents of their clutches on the counter. Morty realizes with a mixture of horror and amusement that he’s been trapped again, this time against the cheap plastic of the sinks.

Fifteen minutes later he’s staring at a version of himself he doesn’t recognize in the mirror of a public bathroom again.

It turns out Mia had a shade of lipstick that matches his shorts perfectly, and Glo has done something to his hair that makes it look less like he’s neglected to get it trimmed in weeks and more like someone’s run their hands through it while he was fucked silly.

But it’s his eyes that Morty can’t stop staring at.

His lashes are long and curled with mascara, and a light shimmer of glitter decorates his lid. The brunette, ‘Izzie’, had ground a pencil into the corner of his eyes until they’d watered with discomfort, until she was confident she’d obtained something she called ‘the perfect smokey eye’.

The combined effect makes Morty’s eyes look not only bigger but… noticeable.

He’s always had boring brown eyes, a match for his boring brown hair and boring brown personality, the same shade as Summer’s. He hadn’t ever really paid attention to them before, other than measuring the bags beneath them and to nod and smile sadly when Summer complained about them, swearing to find the money for green contact lenses.

But now Morty’s wondering if his big sister is just shit at doing her own makeup.

His eyes look rich, and warm, and unmistakably _inviting_.

“Momo’s got doe eyes to put us all to shame,” Mia had chortled, and the rest of the girls agreed.

Morty fights the urge to rub his face in embarrassment, and nods at the door before they decide to change his already diminutive nickname to ‘Bambi’. Or worse, ‘Bam-Bam’.

“Can we go dance now?”

“Hell yeah, once Nikki gets the next round of shots!”

The girls immediately descend into good natured bickering, and Morty slips out the door without them, shouldering his way slowly into the middle of the dance floor and letting the movement of the crowd and the throb of the music sink into him.

He might not know himself when he looks in the mirror, but he knows himself here.

Being surrounded by the music is exactly as good at Morty had imagined from the outside, and his eyes flutter closed, heavy with the unfamiliar weight of the makeup. The beat changes, and he starts to dance.

One song flows into the next, and he has no idea how long it’s been when a hand falls heavily on his shoulder. He spins to face it, and almost trips over his heels.

It’s just Izzie and Mia, moving in tandem with the rhythm and grinning ecstatically at him.

“Momo where have you been? We missed you!.”

Morty doesn’t feel like shouting back, so he just does his best to gesture ‘here, basically’ without breaking too much of his rhythm.

“We drank your shots, but we have another surprise for you!”

He’s figuring out at this point that their ‘surprises’ are more for their own entertainment than his, but he’s not one to argue with results when he’s wearing borrowed shoes and eyeliner, so he nods.

“This is Trent!” Mia yells, pulling on the arm of the clean-cut guy in a striped shirt beside her. He’s one of the few people in the crowd not dancing wholeheartedly, seeming more interested in Mia and then the androgynous teen when he turns to face him.

Morty waves, before bringing his hand back up to his hair and throwing his whole body into the vibrating baseline. He’s starting to get mildly annoyed with the distractions, hoping he can rush through whatever awkward interaction they seem to want out of him and get back to focusing on dancing. It’s highly unlikely he’ll be able to get back in here again, he wants to make the most of it while he can.

Izzie pulls an Altoid tin out of her clutch and pops one in her mouth, and holds one out for Mia, who giggles and sticks out her tongue playfully, keeping eye contact with Trent as she accepts the mint. Rolling her eyes, Izzie picks up another and offers it in Morty’s direction.

Now that he’s been snapped out of the zone, Morty can feel the sweat dripping uncomfortably down the back of his neck, his mouth dry and sour. He’s never been a fan of unsweetened mints, but the last of his lollipops was sucked bare this morning, and since he apparently missed his window for a free drink, anything right now is welcomed.

Grimacing a little in anticipation, he sticks out his tongue too, earning a wolf whistle from a still giggling Mia and an arched brow from her male companion.

The tablet hits Morty’s tongue with the unpleasant chalky texture he remembers, and his mouth is too dry to even register a flavor for a moment. He closes his mouth and sucks hard, trying to kickstart his salivary glands. The moment that blessed moisture floods his mouth though, Morty realizes he’s made a terrible mistake.

Instead of the overwhelming flavor of mint rushing his sinuses, he’s met with a horrible bitter flavor with an unmistakably chemical aftertaste like cheap root beer.

He must pull one hell of a face, because Izzie chuckles as she tucks the tin back in her bag.

“Trent always has the best shit.”

The tablet has dissolved into a gritty, wet mass on his tongue now, and he wonders if it’s too late to spit it out. Morty looks at the calm smile starting to overtake Izzie’s face, and the high, giggling laughter still spilling out of Mia as she fondles the material of Trent’s shirt.

_Trent the drug dealer, not her boyfriend. Well, maybe her boyfriend too, I don’t know her life…_

He can already start to feel something happening, starting from his chest and expanding outward, moving like a panic attack made of golden molasses. It’s could be all in his head. It’s only been a few seconds. Then again, he’s still pretty damn small.

Shit, what did he last eat? _When_ did he last eat?

Eventually it comes down to another snap decision. Morty swallows impulsively, trying to clear the gritty bitterness from his mouth, and trying to brace himself for whatever might come next.

Closing his eyes on the grinning faces of his new ‘friends’, he throws himself back into dancing, letting the music help to wash away his nerves. From what little Morty knows about actually taking drugs, going into it with an impending anxiety attack is only going to give him a bad trip.

He dances until the music changes again, faster, with a rattling drum baseline this time, and the crowd cheers and begins to stomp their feet along with the primitive beat. Morty’s eyes snap open, and he gasps at the scene around him.

The pinks and blues that swim over the crowd and more vibrant, and beautiful than any nebula he’s ever seen in the vastness of space, and the crowd moves in a unified, joyous wave of motion. Izzie and Mia have likewise lost themselves in the sound, moving in a perfect tandem as their hands rise and fall up and down each other’s upper arms, blissed out grins on their faces.

Glo and Nikki have also returned from wherever they’ve been, the same ecstatic shine in their eyes. Morty wonders with amazement if his own eyes look like that too, and loses himself in imagining that unfamiliar face in the mirror, brown eyes shimmering with more love and adoration for humanity than he’s known in his fourteen years of living combined.

Soft lips drag him out of his fantasy, more plush and perfect than anything he’s ever known, and Morty can’t imagine a better first kiss, a better moment, a better night. The lips pull back and he realizes they belong to Glo at the same moment he realizes that the lights from the stage shining through her platinum blonde hair do indeed make her glow incandescently.

More hands surround him now, some soft and belonging to people he knows, and others rough and unfamiliar, but Morty welcomes them all, craning his head back as he throws his whole body into the dance, kissing back enthusiastically as sets of lips appear and then disappear to be replaced by new ones.

 

* * *

 

That morning Morty sleeps more soundly and peacefully than he has in years, waking only as the late afternoon tides start to lap at his toes beneath the pier where he fell asleep. He doesn’t remember how he got there, but his sneakers are safe and dry, tucked behind his head as a pillow, and his limbs feel pleasantly heavy and dull, the way the always do after a good night of dancing.

His feet are sore as hell though, and he guesses that’s either from the heels or walking barefoot to the beach. He sits up and lets the breeze blow through his hair, burying his feet in the wet sand for relief, humming happily as the waves lap around his ankles.

It’s only a few minutes before Morty’s stomach makes its protests insistently known though, and he climbs to his feet, walking further up the beach to dry them. The sun is close to setting, but the bodega up the street has fresh mangos for a quarter, even if the clerk gives him a funny look as he buys half a dozen.

Later he finds a mirror and laughs, realizing his eyes are still smeared with faded makeup like a young and frightened raccoon. He buys wipes at the drugstore to remove it, and on an impulse lifts a cheap mascara and pencil like the ones he’d seen Izzie use last night.

He walks back to the top of the pier and lets his feet dangle into the water, watching the sunset as he eats mango after mango, chucking the empty pits and rinds into the Pacific Ocean.

The next night though, everything feels like it’s falling apart.

He can’t sleep all day, tossing and turning until a family of three packs up their beach umbrella and moves further away from him with nervous looks. He buys a pack of lollipops, ignoring the dwindling size of his roll of bills. The heat skyrockets in the mid-afternoon, and for once there’s not a single other kid around to tell him where to find some relief. He’s completely alone.

By the time the sun sets, Morty feels like he’s going to cry, desperate to remember why this new life he’s chosen for himself is better than the one he left behind.

And so, lost in his own thoughts, he ends up retracing his steps to the warehouse. It’s a Monday night, but the club operates most of the week, playing lesser known DJs and less popular varieties of music during the week. The crowd is small, and some strange variation of dubstep is echoing through the walls when he gets to the alley, and he closes his eyes, trying in vain to chase down the beat and feel what he has before.

It’s eluding him, the tempos changing each time when he’s right on the verge of catching them, making his teeth grind and his eyes almost tear up with frustration. He’s about to give it up as a bad job, go wallow in the silence of another deserted street, when he’s jarred out of it again.

“Hey, it's Momo, right?"

Morty’s eyes snap open, and he’s about to shake his head no when he recognizes the face smiling down at him.

“T-Trent. Hi.”

Trent smiles and offers a hand to shake. “You were the life of the party Saturday night, I’ve never seen someone own a dancefloor like you did.”

Feeling a little less off-balance, Morty accepts the handshake and the compliment.

“Thanks. I really love dancing, it was really cool to get in there.”

“Yeah, Nikki told me they found you dancing out here,” The older man smiles. “You just come and listen to the music?”

“Sometimes,” Morty mutters, rubbing the back of his neck as he stares down at his tattered sneakers, recognizing how pathetic he must look.

“That’s awesome, you’re a real purist.”

Shrugging, the teen fakes a smile. “Yeah, I’m just not feeling the music tonight… think I’m… I’m gonna go.”

Trent looks a little surprised, and just a bit disappointed.

“Rough day?”

“Something like that.”

Clicking his tongue sympathetically, the older man slides his hands into his pockets, searching for something.

“Fuckin’ Mondays will do that to the best of us.” With a smooth motion he pulls out a white tablet and holds it up. “Need a little pick-me-up to get you jump-started?”

Licking his lips nervously, Morty gets a flash of the bitter chemical taste, a brief memory of a night without worries, of feeling confident and sexy and uncomplicatedly _good_.

But he has exactly twenty-seven dollars and forty-four cents to his name, and most of that isn’t on him.

“No, thanks. I don’t really… have any cash, right now.”

Nodding understandingly, Trent pockets the pill again before turning to leave, then pausing.

“You know, you could always do me a favor instead if you wanted it.”

Morty’s mouth moves before his brain does.

“What?”

Turning back towards the teen, the dealer takes another step forward and shrugs casually.

“It’s not a big deal, same as Mia does.”

Morty’s breathing has gone shallow, and he leans back against the wall of the rave, still feeling that maddeningly inconsistent beat beneath his fingers, as Trent leans in to match him.

“You know,” he murmurs, as his lips start to graze Morty’s neck, “You really are a sight to see when you dance.”

A sense of unbelievable deja vu sweeps over Morty, and he’s back in a locker room in Disney World with ‘Robert’ murmuring filthy nothings in his ear. Even the air has the same muggy, heavy heat that seems to spawn these almost ridiculous situations.

But Morty doesn’t feel that sense of calm, or relief he had before. He knows what’s being asked of him, what’s expected of him, and this time he knows he could walk away, simply decide he doesn’t feel like paying the price tonight. He’s not confident tonight, he’s not a giggling companion, or a smiling vixen with smoky, glittering eyes, or any of the things that Trent seems to remember him being, seems to want him to be.

But he could be again.

One little tab and he can have it all back, find his center on the center of the dance floor.

If he can get back there, he’s certain he can figure out what to do next, what he needs to do next. How to fix the problems of a nearly-empty money clip in a gym locker and the nagging, cavernous loneliness in his stomach he’s been ignoring for days, months, _years_.

Without further coaxing, Morty sinks as gracefully as he can to his knees, trying to emulate the dancer’s fluid movements that Trent had seemed to appreciate.

“I-I’ve never…”

His throat runs, dry, and Morty clears it, staring down at the pair of spotless shiny black dance shoes in front of him.

“I’ve never done this before.”

It’s nearly a word for word repeat of what he’d said the last time, and it’s as true now as it was then, but Morty still feels something missing as he says it. That shining, wild creature he catches glimpses of in bathroom mirrors is nowhere to be found, but when he looks up at Trent’s face there must be _something_ in his eyes that’s still appealing, because the man curses and starts to undo his belt.

“Jesus H. Christ, you’re fuckin’ pretty kid. I’ll give you the best ride you’ve had once you do the same for me.”

The teen wants desperately to close his eyes, to look away as well-manicured hands pull at a careful French tuck and scrabble at his fly, hurriedly lowered to reveal red silk boxers that are also pushed out of the way.

Trent seems content to lean against the wall and handle himself for a minute, while Morty watches with a mixture of real and feigned interest.

It’s not the first dick he’s ever seen, obviously. But it’s the first besides his own he’s ever seen go from flaccid to erect, with fast, choppy pumps of Trent’s hand. It looks like he’s more of a Show-er than a Grower, it probably won’t be as difficult as Morty had worried to turn out a half-decent first performance.

Besides, he’d probably like it if Morty choked a little.

Morty finally does let his eyes slide closed as Trent’s hand slows to a stop and moves cup his cheek. Letting his mouth fall open and trying to bring his lips and tongue over his teeth as best he can, he waits and takes deep breaths in through his nose.

If he hadn’t been waiting for it, been straining to listen for it for weeks, he probably would have missed the sound of a portal opening and a pair of boots stepping through a second later.

There’s a confused curse above him that’s cut off abruptly by the sound of a one-of-a-kind gunshot, and the hand that’s clasped onto Morty’s face goes horribly limp for a fraction of a second before falling away with a heavy thud.

He doesn’t move for a good several seconds except to let his mouth fall closed and to dig his nails deeper into the skin of his bare legs. He breathes deeply through his nose, in and out, and the smell of heat and humidity and dumpsters on collection day is now mingled with the smells of singed silk and human flesh.

He finally opens his eyes, unable to bear the silence overlaying the godawful club music any longer, and turns to look up into Rick’s face, expression, if he has one, hidden by aviators that flash pink and blue in the club lights.

Rick shoots a portal on the warehouse wall beside him, and Morty stumbles to his feet, trying not to trip over or look too closely at the pile of clothes and human remains that had been Trent a minute earlier. Not bothering to wipe the grime from his knees, he walks resignedly into the portal, praying to face the emptiness of the garage rather than his parents’ faces on the other side.

Instead he steps through into the lobby of an all-night diner, one he immediately recognizes. They’re only a couple of miles away, still in the heart of Miami.

Rick walks through the portal behind him and ignores the sign at the hostess’s stand, continuing directly to the booth in the far corner of the room. Morty follows him, more off balance than he was at the active crime scene a moment ago.

A tired looking waitress walks up to drop off their menus, but Rick waves her off.

“Coffee and stack of pancakes, and a plate with two of everything with OJ.”

She doesn’t even bother to write it down, nodding and shuffling back to the kitchen before returning with their drinks. Rick pours three packs of sugar and half of one of his smaller flasks into his mug before he touches it, then sits and stares out the window.

Morty waits. He’s gotten good at sitting and waiting for Rick to talk, even if this is the first time he’s gotten to exercise the skill in a while.

It doesn’t take long, maybe five or six minutes of fiddling with the wrapper to his straw, but what comes out of Rick’s mouth is about the last thing that Morty had been expecting.

“I thought you were different, Morty. Better than the others.”

Morty’s head snaps up so fast to stare at Rick he can almost feel his spine develop whiplash in the process.

“When you ran away from home, refused to stay in that shithole of a situation, I was almost proud of you. Thought you were actually going to try to make something of yourself.”

The older man reaches up to remove his glasses, folding them on the table beside his mug before looking straight at Morty.

“But you spend one lousy month on your own and look where I find you. A half-starved homeless whore about to suck down a kiddy fiddler’s jizz for a ten-dollar crack rock.”

His face and tone are still flat and calm, but Morty immediately realizes why his grandfather wears mirrored shades at all times.

Rick’s eyes aren’t just striking, they’re almost obscenely expressive. For all the hardness they reveal, they’re deep and open, and Morty thinks he’d almost fall down them if not for the sheer  _anger_ that’s emanating from them.

He also realizes that this is only the second time he’s ever seen Rick without them directly, and the stab of rejection that twists in Morty’s gut at the memory of the first time is compounded when he continues talking.

“I’m disappointed.”

It’s short, and still spoken in such a flat, bored tone, that cuts even deeper. It feels like Rick is back to speaking as little as possible, like Morty isn’t worth the time or effort it takes to spice it up with a ‘congratulations you’ve managed to disappoint me when my expectations were still just above Jerry-level’.

Anger of his own flares in Morty’s chest, and he finds himself practically spitting back across the table.

“Fuck you, Rick. You don’t have the right to judge me!”  

Rick snorts, sipping his spiked coffee.

“It’s true,” Morty insists, “I’ve seen you put more shit in your body in the six months you lived with us than I could in a decade.”

“That’s because there’s a very simple difference between you and me, Morty,” Rick says calmly. “Namely that I am not a fucking moron and you are.”

Morty opens his mouth to respond, but Rick steamrolls right over him.

“Do you have any idea what that shit was? Where it came from? What it’s laced with? No. What about that’s asshole’s dick? You didn’t even have a condom on it.”

Shaking his head in disdain, Rick spots their waitress approaching with their meals, and slips his glasses back on.

“I can always judge the shit out of stupid.”

Heaping plates of breakfast food hit the table and Rick immediately begins to tuck into his enormous stack of pancakes, doused liberally in maple syrup.

Slightly chagrined and stomach rumbling, Morty stares at his own mass of bacon, eggs, hash browns, sausage, and pancakes distantly, trying to come up with a better retort than ‘It was Molly, I think’ and ‘I wasn’t planning to swallow.’

After a few minutes of poking at his eggs morosely, he quietly give voice to the only excuse he can think of.

“I wanted it.”

Rick has already finished his meal and shoves it away with a satisfied belch.

“Really. That’s what you want?”

Producing a toothpick, he leans back again the booth, considering Morty critically.

“Then you need to aim a lot fucking higher on the totem pole.”

Morty blinks. “What?”

“Being a whore. If that’s what you want.”

“Fuck off, Rick,” the teen mutters into his hash browns, absently stabbing at a sausage link. Morty’s waited in the halls of enough brothels and the parking lots of enough cheap motels to know that Rick Sanchez is a proud patron of the galaxy’s oldest profession, but he doesn’t appreciate being teased. Once more the only time he’s able to get Rick to talk to him is to make fun of him, not actually meet him on the level.

A dull thump hits the table, and Morty looks up to see a stack of twenty dollar bills unfolding themselves.

“Five hundred oughta do it.”

He tears his eyes from the money and looks back at his grandfather.

“D-do what?”

Rick grins. “Be enough for you to climb under the table and suck me off right now.”

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/164374944@N07/44444823262/in/dateposted/)

Morty’s breathing stops. His heart stops. His entire brain stops.

“I mean,” Rick continues, “You were willing to get on your knees in an alley for a ten-dollar bump of shit-grade MDMA.”

Morty’s heart is the first to come back online, kicking into overdrive as it jackrabbits away behind his chest, trying to make up for lost time.

“So I have to assume you’re fine with the sucking dick in public part.”

His breathing is next, ragged, shallow, and utterly out of his control.

“But I figure fifty times your usual rate is enough to make up for the incest factor of blowing your grandpa.”

Morty’s brain finally comes back online too, a thousand pieces of information slotting into place in a way they’d always refused for math tests or anything else he’d ever considered important before this moment.

_This is a test._

_Twenty-seven dollars and forty-four cents._

_That doesn’t matter, he’s taking me home after this._

_Isn’t he?_

_This is a test._

_He can’t actually expect me to do it._

_He can’t actually want me to do it._

_Can he?_

_This is a test._

_If I did it how far would he go before I called his bluff?_

_Would I call his bluff?_

_Five hundred dollars._

_Fuck me, I’d do it for free._

When Morty’s brain decides to reconnect to his optic nerves, he’s not staring at Rick, or at the money. He’s staring straight down at his hash browns, breathing hard as he tries to come to terms with the life-altering revelation he’s just had.

Rick just seems amused, apparently taking his shocked silence as proof of his point.

“Yeah. That's what I thought."

The tension of the moment seems to have passed, but Morty still can't bring himself to move, mind reeling as he tries to backtrack, to figure out how to work backwards, to find some kind of opener, aside, even cheesy fucking pick-up line to mention that ‘by the way, as of three minutes ago I realized I was not just open to, but incredibly agreeable to the idea of fucking you, Grandpa Rick, I happen to know a cheap motel with decent air conditioning around the corner, wanna take me for a ride?’

But Rick is already standing, stretching as he looks out the window at the first glimpses of dawn. Morty wonders if they’ve found the body yet.

“You know Morty, you might be right on one point,” he concedes, the cityscape reflecting in his glasses. “This city is exactly the kind of hellhole I could get used to.”

Morty’s hands are gripping the edge of the table. He wonders how long they’ve been like that.

“You-you're not going to take me back?”

Smirking, Rick leans down and whispers in Morty’s ear.

"Try to impress me, this time.”

By the time Morty gets his breathing, and his newly interested but very on-board dick under control again, Rick has already left the diner and strolled around the corner out of sight.

He strains his hearing for the tell-tale sound of a portal forming, but there’s nothing. Turning back to the pile of bills lying on the table, Morty starts to eat his breakfast and formulate a plan.

He’ll need to go shopping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aahhhh oh my god look at those beautiful works of art, am I right?!!? I'm so glad Rick's dramatic reappearance inspired my artists!
> 
> Side note: Morty was experiencing the famous MDMA one-day delayed hangover, aka 'Blue Mondays/Suicide Tuesdays'. Trent and Rick would know this, but Morty wouldn't, and thus has no real understanding of why he feels like shit and desperate for another serotonin boost.


	3. Part 2, Chapter 1

Morty hoists his purple gym bag over his shoulder and turns to face the rest of the assembled dancers in the dressing room.

“‘Kay girls, I’m off on a grocery run, anyone want anything?”

An eager squeal of delight comes from a couple of the girls’ mouth as they dive into their own bags, counting out bills.

“Hell yes,” Ginger, (whose real name was Meredith) crows, holding a crisp fifty above her head.

Plucking it from her outstretched fingers with ease, Morty folds it in a side pocket of his bag with his own takings from the afternoon shift.

“The usual, Mer?”

She scowls at him. “Yes, _Mortimer_.”

Sticking his candy-reddened tongue out at her, he casually accepts bills from a couple of the other dancers.

“Hey, I’m telling you, you should lean into it. Get rid of the tacky orange dye that does _not_ suit you at all, and go blue and green. Meredith the Mermaid. You need a better schtick.”

“My hair is fine.” She insists, patting it a little self-consciously. “You’re not one to talk with your roots poking out of that cheap peroxide weave."

“I’m sure you’re right,” Morty says. “That must be the reason you made three times what I did in two hours… Oh wait, it was the other way around, wasn’t it?”

Ginger flips him off and turns back to wiping off her makeup. Counting up the orders, Morty looks around the room.

“Anybody else?”

One of the newest dancers, Kylie, approaches him shyly, holding out a crumpled twenty. He smiles at her while he takes it.

“Do you know what you’d like?”

“A-anything is good. Whatever’s popular.” She stutters a little and Morty feels a pang of sympathy. He remembers his first week at the club, he’d tripped over his tongue so much he was pretty sure half of the patrons he’d tried to give lapdances to had thought he was off mentally, instead of just underage and lacking in self-confidence.

He hands the twenty back. “Call it a welcome present. I know you’re not making the big tips yet.”

One of the girls in the back who’d passed him forty dollars catcalls.

“Yo, Morty, I never got a first week freebie. You gonna give me one now?”

“No Simone,” he shoots back. “I watched you pick a guy’s pocket for that cash half an hour ago. That’s your freebie.”

She boos, but laughs with the rest of the room, and Morty waves goodbye to all of them as he heads out the door to the street.

Slipping on his sunglasses and plugging an earbud in one ear, he starts to wander down the street. It’s another beautiful afternoon in Miami.

The sun beats down on him as soon as he steps onto the overheated pavement, and he makes a plan to go sunbathing on the beach tomorrow afternoon. These afternoon shifts are hell on his tan. The club is a good half a mile from the beach, but fortunately he’s heading in that direction. He’ll be able to pick up a bit of a breeze there.

Rolling his neck out as he enjoys the fresh air, Morty lets the Tropical House mix rolling through his ears set his pace, rolling his hips a little and tossing his hair a bit too much. The freedom of movement and music is welcome after the set routines and the smell of sweat and brass from the pole during his shift.

He still loves his job of course, there’s no bigger thrill than dancing to a frenzied crowd on a Saturday night, the music putting everyone in sync, with all eyes on him as he shows off his signature move to ecstatic cheers of approval.

But it’s different on a Wednesday afternoon, catering to the half a dozen people who’ve come to hide from the hottest part of an afternoon with nowhere better to be. At least he rates as more entertaining than a movie theater, but the artificial dark of the club always throws him off during the day.

It’s only half an hour’s walk to his destination, but he’s glad when the buildings become taller and he gets to walk in the shade. The warehouse finally looms into sight, and he presses his hand against its outer wall like he’s greeting a much beloved childhood pet.

The front door has a palm scanner that beeps and cheerfully allows Morty access the moment he touches it, and he slips inside, letting the door click shut behind him.

The warehouse hasn’t been a dance club for almost two years, but Morty still feels a pang of mourning every time he comes through the door and sees bright white lights suspended from the framework where roving colored ones used to hang. The bar still exists, fully stocked, but the mirror over it doesn’t look out over an empty dance floor anymore.

Rows of tables fill the space, some covered with product, but the majority with gadgets and lab equipment. Morty sets his bag down on one of the tables, careful to avoid the sticky substance on the other end, before heading behind the bar for the sodas in the mini-fridge.

Rick appears from the main office above the floor a few minutes later as Morty slices limes for his second diet coke, shades on but hair and coat ruffled. If they’d been anywhere else, Morty would have guessed he’d been having sex, but Rick never allows anyone else in here. Sadly, that means there is a deficit of sex in this building, one that Rick will still not allow them to rectify.

“Morning Rick,” Morty chirps, already pulling the whiskey off the shelf and filling a rocks glass. There’s no response, but Rick takes a seat on one of the bar stools and downs the drink while Morty flips on the espresso machine to make him a Cuban coffee.

Slowly, fingers make their way from the glass to pull through hair and straighten lapels, and by the end of his second whiskey and third espresso Rick is back to normal.

Shaking his head, Morty brings up the obvious again.

“I can’t believe you own thirty-odd mansions in Miami and you still choose to sleep on a cot in that shitty office.”

“Yeah, and all of them put together cost a fraction of what I’ve got- what’s stored in here,” Rick replies, rising and moving to the lab floor.

“That’s a lame excuse,” Morty hops over the bar and follows him. “We both know the security measures on this place are impenetrable.”

Snorting, Rick turns to eye the purple duffel bag on one of his tables.“That doesn’t mean my shit won’t still go mysteriously missing.”

Rolling his eyes, Morty pulls the wad of bills out and chucks them at Rick, who catches them with the same dextrous speed he always has, sending a flutter through the floor of his stomach and into his groin.

“A hundred and twenty dollars worth of your best coke and a hundred worth of E tabs today, Rick.”

Rick picks up a pair of bags from each and drops them in Morty’s open bag.

“You know if anyone else used their friends and family discount to resell my shit for profit I’d string them up by their tendons.”

“You don’t give anyone else the ‘friends and family’ discount, Rick,” Morty replies cheerfully, zipping the bag shut.

Grunting noncommittally, the older man walks across the row to tables to sit at one with one with an unidentified plasma cannon dismantled across its surface. Morty waits a minute, but Rick just picks up a pair of needlenose pliers and starts to work on it.

Checking his watch, Morty confirms the time. Only seven o’clock. Nothing interesting will be happening for hours, and the sun is only just starting to go down. He’s not particularly excited to head out back into the early July heat.

Wandering through the maze of tables, Morty drapes himself over Rick’s shoulder, his hair falling loose to tickle the back of Ricks’ neck.

“Can I help?”

It’s a strange request, really. He hasn’t offered to help Rick with any of his projects since the night he decided to leave home, but it had come from a natural place.

Rick has gone stiff beneath him, the way he always does a little when Morty gets too close, but he doesn’t look up.

“I doubt it.”

Morty’s guessing that’s because Rick isn’t actually doing anything with the gun. From this vantage point it looks like he’s just separating and replacing wire connections at random. Rick probably just wanted something to look like he was busy to encourage Morty to leave. He’d never admit it if Morty called him on his bluff though, so he stays quiet.

It’s not exactly thrilling to watch, but Morty knows Rick will get bored as quickly or faster than he will and eventually start something else. There’s a tv with a dimensional cable box in the office, but he’s feeling lazy, and the stairs look even more rickety and daunting than usual.

Instead he wraps his arms around Rick’s neck, and leans against him, sighing contently in his ear the way he knows will blow heat against his ear. It’s a guaranteed five dollar tip during a lap dance, and it does manage to make the third disconnection of the red and yellow wires in the last five minutes move a lot more slowly.

Encouraged, Morty decides to push a few more buttons.

“You know Rick, if you’re really upset at me for making sure my friends get the purest stuff in Miami, I could always just buy from Javier over on the Boulevard.”

No response. Rick knows Morty isn’t dumb enough to buy from anyone but him. That rule was made almost excessively clear within Rick’s first month in town. Time to move on to Morty’s favorite topic of conversation then.

Sighing sweetly again, Morty nuzzles his face into the crook of Rick’s neck, enjoying every second of the scent. It’s not often Rick lets himself get cornered like this, it’s a rare treat.

“I can’t wait until you stop playing hard to get and fuck me,” Morty murmurs softly. “It’s going to be so incredible…”

“I can’t wait until you grow out of your teenage delusions and stop thinking everyone wants to fuck your jailbait ass,” Rick says in a calm monotone.

Success. Morty smiles.

“Is it a delusion if you've built a successful career out of it?” he wonders, watching Rick strip a wire accidentally.

Rick doesn’t even snap back at him with a comment about how stripping and hooking are not careers. Morty doesn’t actually remember the last time he knows Rick left the warehouse, he might not have gotten laid in weeks. What a stroke of luck.

“You know there’s a few things I’ve saved special, just for you Rick,” Morty confesses conspiratorially, his lips less than an inch from Rick’s earlobe.

“Lemme guess, you don’t kiss on the mouth,” Rick deadpans again, stripping the rest of the wires to match.

Frowning, Morty lets go of his hard-won perch and stands, stretching obviously as he shakes his head.

“Oh no, I do.”

Rick seems to have been thrown off guard by his move, at least enough to face him fractionally.

“People love a cherry candy kiss.” He winks at his reflection in those damned glasses. “It’s that Lolita angle that pays the bills.”

Rick looks unimpressed, but he always does. Morty focuses more on the tension in his shoulders, the tapping of his fingers against the table, and takes a chance. Exploiting the gap that Rick has created by turning, he quickly slips a leg over Rick’s lap and settles on it with seasoned practice.

Running his hands up Rick’s ridiculous lab coat to settle on his shoulders, he bats his eyes.

“Don’t you wanna know what I did actually save?”

“If it’ll get you off my lap.”

Rolling his eyes more fondly this time, Morty tells him.

“Nobody’s ever actually fucked ‘my jailbait ass’.”

The glasses give nothing away, but Morty has a feeling that there’s more than a hint of disbelief under them.

Shrugging, Morty smiles and leans in to whisper in Rick’s ear again, pressing every inch he can against Rick as he does so.

“I decided a long time ago, Rick. You’re going to be the first one to fuck me.”

The fraction of a second after that feels like it lasts an eternity, but Rick doesn’t stop him as he pulls back and presses his lips against Rick’s, trying to pour every ounce of determination he has into it. Rick’s lips don’t open either though, and Morty sits back after a couple of seconds, licking lightly at them as he pulls away.

The impenetrable mask is still up, but Morty uses it to his advantage, grinning his best ‘I told you so’ grin.

“See? Cherry.”

He climbs off of Rick’s lap as quickly as he had arrived, grabbing his bag and throwing it over his shoulder as he takes off as fast as possible in flip flops.

“Bye Rick, see you tomorrow!”

Rick hasn’t moved from his spot at the table, but the shades watch him go.

 

* * *

 

Every time Rick buys a new property he keys in Morty’s biometrics to the security system. He used to be homeless, now he has more places within city limits than anyone could sleep in in a month. It’s a nice, rather sentimental gesture on Rick’s part, though Morty knows the other, more practical aspects that probably factored in. He has yet to decide if turning his favorite club into a base of operations was another sentimental action, or just a continual reminder of the situation Rick had found him in.

Morty does end up crashing in one of the houses or apartments a once a week or so, when he’s too tired or drunk to make it somewhere else, but most nights, despite any rumors to the contrary, he sleeps at his own place, alone in his own bed.

It’s a crappy little apartment that he shares with three of the other dancers from work, but it’s his, and he’s paid for every mysteriously stained carpet and window that bleeds heat and moisture. Part of it is to show Rick that he’s doing fine. To prove that he’s independent, he’s making something of himself, just like he was told. The other part is that he’s never liked living alone. The girls make the place feel alive, even if the kitchen is always a mess and the shower is never empty of someone else’s hair supplies and actual hair.

It’s a crappy little sanctuary that allows Morty to save most of the money he rakes in for shopping sprees, but most days he does end up making his way to the warehouse to check on Rick anyway.

Most days Rick is working on something, his business or his science experiments, though Morty’s learned that calling them that is the best way to put Rick in an indignant huff for a couple hours. Science experiments are for baking soda volcanos and crappy models of the solar system that still stick on Pluto. What he does is _real_ scientific work.

Other days he’s asleep upstairs, or on one notable occasion, sprawled out unconscious on top of the bar with a bottle of tequila in one hand and a giant plastic candy cane in the other. It was an atypical St. Patrick’s day, to say the least.

On days when Rick isn’t there Morty still panics a little. Those are the only nights he sleeps on the cot in the office, waiting for the sound of a portal with his eyes squeezed shut, an echo of the one he’d heard a few feet away and a lifetime ago.

Today he’s in luck though, Rick is awake and not actively engaged in something he can pass off as more important than Morty, unless the gin and tonic he’s mixing behind the bar is particularly important.

Morty strolls through the door and slams it shut behind him, shaking his head irritatedly at the mess the wind has made of it. Stupid hurricane season. Still, the weather had given him his latest excuse to come by and check in on his kingpin grandpa.

And by check in on, he of course means ‘flirt shamelessly’.

“Morning, Rick!” He chirps cheerfully, ignoring the obvious dusk through the high windows of the warehouse. “How’s it going?”

He’s never actually seen Rick leave the warehouse to do anything involving his burgeoning criminal empire, but he’s gotten good enough at having his fingers in various pies to hear the rumors. Rick’s muscled out two-thirds of the cocaine suppliers in Miami-Dade County through a combination of intimidation, smarts, and straight up horrific violence that makes most of the cocaine druglords of the 1980’s look like caricatured 1920’s mobsters chewing on oversized novelty cigars.

Morty tries not to stick his nose further in Rick’s business than is wise, but he is curious to know if he actually dropped a guy and his girlfriend into a vat of acid with a crane, ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ style. Another day.

At this point everyone left in the cocaine market either works directly for Rick or supplies for him, and is very careful to mind their P's & Q's. Drug crime might just be at an all-time low once Rick’s cleansings drop off the charts at Miami Police HQ.

As for ecstasy and hallucinogens? Rick took over that market just as viciously, but with barely a drop of blood shed. His shit is just superior, in every goddamn way. Accept no substitutions. Morty’s heard people on the street argue about whether the LSD you can buy on a corner in Miami now is ‘as good as’, or ‘better than’ the shit you could buy in the sixties. Morty can’t imagine a night of proper partying without getting a dose of E from Rick first.

He’d confessed his secret ingredient to Morty once, when the teen had burst in on a cooking day and freaked at the sight of blue crystals scattered across the tables.

Rick had told him to calm the fuck down and stop watching ‘Breaking Bad’. There were a hundred better shows, it’s fucking overhyped to all hell. No, it wasn’t meth. It was apparently ‘Kallaxian Crystal’, that Rick harvested from a dozen planets and added in tiny amounts to every batch he made.

He’d been in a particularly good mood that day, high as balls himself, and Morty had gotten to snort a line of pure K-Lax with him after he helped him finish package it all. Rick had turned on the killer sound system that was still installed, and they’d danced on top of the bar together.

The high didn’t last long, maybe fifteen minutes, but they were fifteen of the best minutes of Morty’s life.

Today Rick looks to be in another mood, though Morty hasn’t quite catalogued this one. He’s considered reading books for autistic people on how to figure out what facial expressions are when you can’t look someone in the eyes, but that had been way too much work. It’s more fun to play Russian Roulette with a certain slant to Rick’s mouth and figure out if it means he’s in a playful mood or a murderous one.

Launching himself on top of the bar, he turns with his back to Rick and stretches out his legs, fully aware of how long they are in his platform heels.

“It’s new, do you like?”

Rick stares at him inscrutable, before taking a sip from his G&T.

“Your plastic surgeon ripped you off, you’re still as flat-chested as ever.”

Blowing a raspberry at the easy joke, Morty tugs on his new fur coat to draw attention to it.

“No, I meant my new coat, obviously.” He looks up through his lashes mischievously. “It was a present from a very _attentive_ regular. He bought it for me with the money from his divorce.”

Rick pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Morty, I can’t count all the ways that statement is pathetic, starting with the fact that you think that’s a brag and ending with the string of issues you’ve gained from your toerag of a father.”

“I know way more fun ways to work out Daddy Issues, if you wanna be my ‘male role model’,” Morty purrs, still burying his face in the soft collar of his coat.

“Gross,” Rick says, draining the last of his drink, but Morty thinks he sees a spot of color hit his cheeks. Interesting.

“Besides, it’s clearly fake.”

Frowning properly now, Morty crosses his arms. “They can dye fur any color, Rick. Just because it’s pink doesn’t mean it’s fake.”

The older man snorts, fishing through one of the bar’s drawers for something. “No, the fact that it’s fake means it’s fake.”

Before Morty can respond Rick pulls out a lighter and sets flame to the bottom of the coat. It ignites quickly, and the teen yelps as he hops off the bar, tearing off the coat and stomping on it with his heels until the flame is extinguished.

When he looks up, glaring, Rick is drinking another gin and tonic, looking categorically smug as he leans against the bar to watch the show. Blowing the hair out of his face, Morty looks pissed.

“What the fuck was that? You could have killed me.”

“Only if the flame reached the peroxide in your scalp.” Rick shoots back.

“Well thanks for ruining my jacket because you were jealous, you sad old fuck,” Morty hisses, storming behind the bar to steal a bottle of something expensive to soothe his grievances.

“Do you smell burnt hair?”

Morty panics for real then, immediately checking that all of his glorious, painstakingly grown out mane is where he’d left it that morning, and sighing in relief when it is.

“No, you asshole.”

“Interesting,” Rick says, “Given that if that was real fur you should have.”

He’s right. The air smells far more like petroleum by-products, and the sad mass of half a coat that’s lying on the middle of the warehouse floor is partially curled black in a particularly melted-plastic kind of way.

Simon is a cheap motherfucker and Morty is absolutely going to ‘accidentally’ bite his dick before he manages to come next week.

“Yeah, well, it was still nicer than any coat you ever got me,” Morty shoots back between sips of french vodka. “You owe me a new one.”

Rick sighs and sets down his drink. “Fine, you prissy little shit.”

Perking up a little at the thought of a shopping trip, Morty sets his own bottle down and smoothes his hair. But Rick doesn’t reach for the keys to the Cadillac he keeps with the salt shakers. Instead he pulls out the portal gun, and plugs something in.

Morty’s eyes go wide. He hasn’t stepped through a portal in years. Images of battlefields and running for his life flood his memories, but they’re interspersed with thoughts of some of the truly memorable shopping bazaars Rick had dragged him through as well. They’d always stayed in the seedier parts, guns and drugs and parts of dead animals that were definitely endangered somewhere, but he remembers walking through the nicer parts to get there. Full of fabrics and colors he’d never seen or felt before, but was too shy and certain of a negative response to ask Rick to stop.

With a deep breath and a final swig of vodka, Morty high-steps through the portal with Rick directly behind him.

It’s not a bazaar. Or an alien shopping mall. Or anywhere that looks to have seen any kind of civilization. It looks like a miserable puce savannah, interspersed with bushes that look like actual pubic hair. Morty doesn’t bother keeping the tight-lipped disappointment off his face.

“Rick…?”

“Welcome to Zebadon Seti-Alpha, Morty. Home of the Zebadonian Leopard, known for the fluffiest self-cleaning fur in the multiverse. Oh, and a lot of burrowing squirrels. Watch out for squirrel-holes.”

Sighing, Morty looks down at his shoes, calculating the odds of death if he has to run for his life in them in a field of deep, ankle-sized holes against the odds of ever again finding a pair of teal platform heels in his size for 60% off at Neiman Marcus.

“And I’m waiting for the part where you tell me that just over some invisible hill I can’t see is a village that will sell us a nice coat already made from this jaguar?”

Rick pulls out his pistol and slips a toothpick between his teeth, grinning.

“Now what kind of grandpa would I be if I let you go around wearing shit off the rack, huh?”

“Fabulous,” Morty replies dryly, pulling off his shoes and starting to fashion a spear out of a pube-bush branch beside them. Some skills are like riding a bike.

“You know every girl’s dream, Rick. Skinned-Carcass Couture.”

Five hours later they tumble out of a portal and back into the warehouse. Rick’s glasses are splattered with blood and the bottom of his pants are torn. Morty is covered in red like he’s just walked out of a paint party, but it’s all soaked through his tank top from the field-dressed skin draped over his shoulders. True to Rick’s word, not a single drop of blood or mud has remained on the outside of the leopard fur.

Turning in the mirror behind the bar, Morty admires his new prize. Rick stands behind him, grinning victoriously.

“Well, whaddya think, Morty?”

Looking down at the bloody and dirty legs he’d shown off just a few hours before, Morty frowns at the cracked nail polish beneath the caked savannah mud.

“I think it needs new boots.”

 

* * *

 

Rick does use the Cadillac from time to time though, and on occasion Morty gets to go with him. The bubblegum pink 1959 Cadillac Coupe Deville sits in the alley outside the warehouse, protected by nothing more than a white cloth cover.

Maybe it disintegrates anyone who touches it, or maybe Rick’s reputation is enough to keep anyone from even considering stealing his ride. Either way, Morty always gets a giddy thrill when he gets to watch Rick rip the cloth off the car with a flourish and then lets him climb in, growling warnings about oily fingers on paint jobs and getting his goddamn feet off the dash.

Driving through the city is an experience that Morty doesn’t get very often, and it always reminds him why he fell in love with Miami in the first place.

Driving through Miami with Rick is even better. Rick drives the same way he flies; reckless, fast, and usually a little drunk. Morty never feels like he’s in any danger though, and half the time he stands up as they cruise through the city, letting the wind whip his hair around him. The old car doesn’t have seatbelts anyway, not that Rick would use them.

But the best part is the looks they get. Morty’s used to attention at this point, and he’s learned to classify it. Lustful, envious, shocked, jealous, disapproving, disbelieving, and impressed. But when they’re out in Rick’s signature ride, there’s a whole new category: respect, with more than a hint of fear.

The car isn’t unique in Miami, but the way Rick drives it certainly is, and there’s more than a fair share of the population that either disappear when they see it coming, or elbow their friends to point them out. Most of them end up averting their eyes from Rick to Morty in the passenger seat, and he gets to categorize that attention too.

He only gets to go on milk runs, Rick dropping off product to distributors or collecting cash from people who are dangerously close to thinking about being late with their payments. The first months Morty heard the whispers about ‘Sanchez and the Blonde’, and grinned silently, but eventually, as both Rick’s and his own notoriety grew independently, people put two and two together. Depending on the rumor mill that day, he’s either Rick’s right hand man, his arm candy, his personal informant, his boy toy, or according to one wild theory that never got much traction, his nephew.

But, once in a while, maybe just every couple months or so, Rick will drop him off at the club afterwards, and come in for a drink.

The moment the engine clicks off in the parking lot of the strip club, Morty almost starts to shake with anticipation.

The owner of the club knows who Rick is of course, and he wisely made the decision months ago not to fire his best dancer, or to piss off the biggest up-and-coming druglord in the state. So Rick gets free drinks all night, top shelf, never watered down. It’s probably a good thing he only comes in so infrequently, Morty suspects this unofficial little protection scam costs his boss a fair few hundred bucks a night.

But Rick gets a drink, and Morty takes the stage.

So maybe Jerome has been briefed on the appropriate and inappropriate bands to play when Rick is in the building. And maybe Morty throws on a little more body glitter and higher heels than usual. And it’s possible that he opens with his best routines, long before the late night crowd is drunk enough to really appreciate them. But that doesn’t mean that Rick isn’t getting the same experience every other person in that room is.

For the first hour or so Morty throws himself into his routines, dancing harder than normal and losing himself in the music, completely ignoring the flash of the house lights over mirrored shades in the corner. He flirts with the regulars, gives a quick lap dance to a high roller with a promise of a shower show later, and watches the number of times the waitress brings Rick a new bottle.

When it’s his turn on stage again, and Rick has started to move from the slow sipping of high quality scotch to the quick downing of vodka on the rocks, Morty’s routine starts to change. He doesn’t throw his hardest tricks anymore, exuberantly shaking the club’s ceiling as he throws his body weight around the pole with his ankles above his head.

Instead he slows down, finding the beat of the music and failing to match it, speeding up and slowing down at exactly the wrong moments as he chases it in counterpoint, writhing around the pole airily.

It’s slow, and sensual when the music is anything but, and the atmosphere in the club starts to go quiet, all the patrons and other dancers falling silent as they turn to watch him. Eventually he abandons the pole altogether, wandering almost absent-mindedly to the tip bar, and smiling at the competing piles of singles offered up for his attention.

He gives it to them, each one in turn, with an affectionate twirl on their laps or a breath in their ears, but that distant, dreamy quality never leaves his movements or his face. He pulls out his signature lollipop and starts to lick it, and his aloof demeanor drives them wild, flagging down the floor manager to compete for private slots, either dances, or for those who make the right list, something more involved.

Morty wanders back to the pole, almost entirely separate from the beat of the club music, sucking on his sweet treat, his eyelashes fluttering dreamily as if he’s a million miles away, lost in memories or fantasies that can never be.

And then his eyes shoot open, and he stares straight at Rick. It’s clear who he’s looking at, though for the patrons at the tip bar it may just look like it’s emptiness of the middle distance that’s captured his attention so raptly, but everyone else in the room can tell.

Rick never sits at the tip bar. He never buys a dance, or a drink for one of the dancers, never does more than drop a twenty on the waitress that’s put up with his sloppy ass at the end of the night. He never gives Morty the opportunity to get closer than the rules of his job allow.

So Morty takes that distance and wields it like a sword, piercing Rick from his darkened corner, the glimmer of the spotlit stage flashing against his glasses and giving away his position as surely as a lighthouse in a storm.

His speed returns, perfectly in sync with the beat like he never lost it, and he starts to gyrate fiercely, climbing the pole desperately and contorting his body in every more impossible displays, his hair whipping freely behind him, the sucker never slipping from his mouth. But his eyes don’t move with the rest of him, his pupils locked on Rick’s form in the corner booth, even as the crowd goes apeshit around him. He ends with a drop from the ceiling that ends a fraction of an inch from the floor, his hair cascading after him in dramatic waves, just as the song ends.

Morty smiles, tucks the piles of bills thrown onto the stage into his g-string, and disappears behind the stage curtain. He has about fifteen minutes to cool down before his manager starts hunting him down, throwing a booked schedule for the rest of the night and part of tomorrow at him, and he plans to use it all. Chugging a bottle of water, he doesn’t reappear from the dressing room door, but heads through the outside performer’s exit and slips back in through the VIP lounge entrance. Rick’s booth is just outside the door, like the world’s most overqualified and unmotivated bouncer, and he slides into it to meet him, grabbing the soda that the waitress has already set on the table and pouring some of Rick’s vodka on top.

Rick quirks his mouth like he’s less than pleased, but whatever, he’s not paying for it. If anything Morty is the one who always works it off when Rick comes to the club, staying past dawn in the closed off back rooms. His voice is going to be so fucked out tomorrow, and he’s definitely dropping by the warehouse for breakfast. Maybe Rick will drive them up to Orlando for Shoney’s. He’s weirdly obsessed with their pancakes.

“Did you like my dance, Rick?” Morty asks, leaning against his arm as he sips his drink.

“You’re getting glitter on my coat,” is Rick’s only reply. Morty grins.

“It’s biodegradable seaweed, don’t worry. You can throw an organic matter bomb at it tomorrow.”

“Yes, Morty, thanks for that. Clearing up DNA at crime scenes was clearly a waste of that tech.”

Giggling, Morty plants a kiss on his cheek. Damn it. The owner’s already getting the balls to start half-waving him over. That guy is either getting less scared of Rick or more greedy from the number of VIPs in the club tonight.

“Well damn,” he sighs, “It looks like I have to go. My public needs me.”

“Need is a strong word, Morty,” Rick mutters. “We need doorstops, but a rock would do in a pinch.”

Frowning a little, Morty tries to figure out what level of truth-drunk Rick is, but nothing more comes.

Rising to his feet, he starts to head over towards his boss to get his schedule. Halfway across the back of the club though, a hand reaches out and grabs at his arm. He turns, smiling brightly, expecting to see Rick manhandling him off for whatever flimsy excuse he’s decided he needs Morty’s company for now, but the hand doesn’t belong to Rick.

It belongs to someone Morty hasn’t been introduced to before, he’s certain of that. He’s known for remembering names and quirks, but this guy has been around the VIP lounge a couple of times. He’d made Kylie almost cry, he knew that, but Simone had been the one to take over. Morty’s temper is still not the most balanced part of his personality breakfast.

Forcing a smile instead of a barked reminder of the club’s standard ‘no touching’ policy, Morty puts on his best customer service voice and purrs up at the guy.

“Hey sugar, what can I do for you?”

The guy is drunk. Not three sheets to the wind drunk yet, but clearly he’s managed to avoid the over-serving laws the same way Rick has: by buying a bottle and controlling the speed at which he goes through it.

“I’ve been watching you,” the guy slurs slightly. ‘Watching’ comes out just a little too close to ‘Washing’.

“Oh really? That’s so sweet, I’m glad you liked my show!” Morty bats his eyes brightly. He could break this guy’s grip, but the owner would be pissed if he causes a scene. On the other hand, if he flirts another thirty seconds the owner will probably count the dollar bills he’s missing every second Morty isn’t on someone’s lap in the champagne room and come retrieve him personally.

Still, it can’t hurt to imply he’s got places to be.

“Did you manage to get a place on my dance card this evening, big guy? I’d love to give you a private repeat. You could tell me all your favorite par-”

“Why’re you always staring at that old guy?” The guy interrupts, rudely, and Morty blinks in annoyance instead of coquettishness.

“I’m sorry? I look at a lot of people when I dance, baby, it’s kinda hard not to when you’re all over the place on the stage.”

The fingers tighten, and Morty’s manager is nowhere to be seen. Probably taking credit card orders while Morty gets bruises, the fat fuck.

“No you don’t!” Drunk guy’s volume raises. “You always look at that old geezer. What is he, your pimp?”

_‘Whaddishe, mypimp?_ ’ Morty mimicks back in his head, placing a hand on drunk guy’s around his arm and not-so-gently removing it.

“You’ve got me wrong, and I think we’re gonna have to ask you to leave, mkay?”

He shouts for Jerome, who manages to climb off his ass in the announcer booth and earn the extra paycheck he takes home as a bouncer for once. Drunk guy is kicked out into the night without so much as a cab called, and Morty spends thirty minutes in the manager’s office threatening to walk the fuck out on the ten grand he stands to make tonight if he doesn’t shape shit up.

Eventually the owner grovels appropriately, and Morty plasters on a smile and comes out to his first appointment of the evening, a regular that’s a banker in the city by day and loves to slum it by snorting coke off Morty’s ass. Morty tried some of it once, it’s Rick’s lower grade stuff, and the dude bragged about the steal he’d gotten on it. He’s pretty certain the dude paid at least three times more than it’s worth.

He pulls the guy through the club by the tie flirtatiously, passing Rick’s corner as he goes. He’s still there, but for all Morty can tell he’s fallen asleep sitting up again.

The rest of the night rushes by in a whirl of lap dances, blowjobs, and interchangeable personalities: Sex Kitten for Jason, Confident Vixen for Owen, Lost Little Boy for Joanne. By the time Morty stumbles out of the dressing room and into the alley, he’s the last dancer to leave. His feet are killing him from those goddamn heels, and the cheerful morning sunlight just seems unnecessarily grating. Morty’s debating whether to spend some of the chunk of change he just made calling an Uber, or to stumble home on flip flops, when he hears a groan from behind the dumpsters.

Cautiously, he shifts his bag with his clothes and tips behind him, and side-steps enough to see who it is.

It’s Asshole-Drunk-Guy, though it looks like he’s closer to Super-Hungover-Asshole now. Goddamnit, Morty is having words with Jerome about making sure people get more than fifty feet away from the club in the future, even if it means the next song starts playing on shuffle without his ‘witty repartee’.

He turns to start walking away, but S-H-A stumbles to his feet and starts to lurch after him.

“Hey! Hey, you!”

Morty sighs. He is so not in the mood for this. His cell phone is dead, and the door to the club has locked behind him for the day. His hair is up in a messy bun at least, but there’s no way he can outrun this fuck, shuffling like the walking dead or not. Not in flip-flops while his feet are already screaming.

“I’m going home!” Morty calls over his shoulder, waving idly behind him, and walking a little faster. Either the guy will think it’s meant for him or, even better, someone inside that sees him leaving.

“Hey slut, don’t you turn your back on me!”

Wonderful. Guess it wasn’t the alcohol that robbed Dickhead McGee of his manners last night. Morty doesn’t turn around, turning the corner around the alley and heading into the parking lot towards the main road. Maybe he can flag down a taxi?

The parking lot isn’t entirely empty though. Rick’s Cadillac is still there, chrome gleaming in the morning sunlight. Morty makes a beeline for it, hoping to make out Rick’s passed out form in the backseat.

No luck. The leather is empty. Fuck.

Crawling in the front seat anyway, Morty eyes the classic dashboard. There’s no way Rick didn’t program some of the ship’s self-defense mechanisms in this, right? Or least leave a gun stashed under the seat? Fuck, he’ll take a bottle to brain the guy with if he has to.

Fuckface O’Cumbucket huffs his way across the parking lot and slams his hands down on the side of the car door, glaring furiously at Morty.

“You got me kicked out before we were done last night, you little bitch.”

“Oh I am absolutely done with you,” Morty replies, bravado his last bluff. “Get the fuck out of here or else.”

“Or else what,” the guy sneers, reaching out to wrap a hand around Morty’s wrist. His skin crawls, and Morty wishes his bag was heavy enough to act as anything but cushion.

A shot rings through the air, and a perfectly dime-shaped hole appears in the arm that’s still gripping the side of the car, paired with the sizzle and smell of searing flesh. It takes a beat for Generic Rapey Fuck #1 to notice that the sound, smell, and appearance of a hole in his arm are in fact connected, and he drops Morty’s wrist in shock, grasping at his elbow instead.

Rick walks casually forward, gun still outstretched and his other hand zipping up his pants. Morty’s torn between shouting ‘where the fuck were you’ and wanting to break down weeping with shame and gratitude that Rick has shown up to find him in this position a-fucking-gain.

At least this time he isn’t a willing participant.

“What the fuck!!” The human swiss cheese yells, turning his attention between Morty and his new assailant. “You fucking shot me!!”

“I don’t like people touching my stuff,” Rick says calmly, and shoots him squarely between the eyes.

Wrinkling his nose in disgust, Morty hugs his bag to his chest and says nothing. Rick leans past him to pull out a DNA grenade, and hucks it on the guys chest. It starts to count down, and the older man turns on the car and pulls out of the parking lot.

Morty waits for the recriminations to start again, echoes of last time ringing in his head.

“You’re going to do my laundry this afternoon,” Rick says instead. “That was my last one, so I can’t use it to get the glitter out of my coat now.”

Nodding quietly and trying not to throw up, Morty agrees. “O-okay, Rick.”

“And you’re going to wash my car too, that fucker left brain and fingerprints all over the paint job.”

Morty just nods again. Rick looks over at him, appraisingly.

“I mean it, too. None of that fucking movie-montage soaping up your daisy-dukes and cut-offs tees that you like so much, I want it done properly.”

Laughing weakly, the teen agrees and makes pathetic banter until they pull into the diner.

“You’re buying me pancakes, come on.”

Morty deliberately doesn’t look down at the car door as he gets out.

 

* * *

 

Rick doesn’t bring it up again, but the next week he presents Morty with a new belly button piercing, featuring a built-in panic button.

It’s not a gun, or a self-defense lesson, or pink stun-gun to keep in his bag (although one of the other girls had gotten him one of those after he warned them what happened), but it’s pretty, and Morty loves it in more ways than he can count. He always assumed Rick had a GPS tracker on him anyway, this one just works two ways.

Rick also drives him to work the next night, and follows him in. Instead of heading for his usual booth at the back of the club though, he ducks into the manager’s office.

He emerges ten minutes later, and waves goodbye to Morty as he leaves, as quickly as he’d arrived. Jerome is gone within an hour, and three beefy security guards join the club’s payroll by the end of the night. One of them, Daniel, is apparently assigned to Morty specifically, and stays as long as he does, walking him home after his last appointment.

Morty tries to get his boss to give him a straight answer about what Rick must have promised him would happen if he didn’t at least clean up the sloppy employment practices around his underage pimping, but the man just turns white as a sheet when Morty comes anywhere near the topic.

He’s glad Rick didn’t shut the place down though. He really does love his job.


	4. Part 2, Chapter 2

Morty sighs and stretches obviously as he rolls over on his back, letting the sun bake his front. There’s the usual quiet huff that tells him Rick has noticed his flagrant use of the Cadillac’s hood as a tanning bed, but no diatribe follows. Either Rick is in a lenient mood today, or he’s more worried about this trade than he’s letting on.

If it’s the former, Morty can definitely convince him that a shopping trip is in order once they make the drop. Rick picked him up from work and dragged him all the way out to Fort Lauderdale, the least he can do is buy him something from that boutique Morty likes. Preferably something excessively slutty he can model back at the warehouse while Rick pretends to be immune.

But judging by the number of toothpicks Rick’s chewed through in the last hour, and the conspicuous scarcity of the flask’s appearance, this isn’t their usual milk run.

Mateo is new on the scene, but he’s stayed out of Miami, respecting Rick’s territory even as its borders start to creep further and further away from the city limits. Eventually he agreed to being a distributor for Rick’s product as far north as Tampa, for a cut that Morty boggled at when he worked it out on a piece of paper.

If Rick’s making five times that, every two weeks? That’s probably why his grandfather’s greed has him sticking around this godforsaken parking lot on the outskirts of town, thirty minutes after Mateo was supposed to show. He once left Morty in the wrong dimension for six hours because he was taking too long finish brushing his hair. Waiting around is not Rick’s style.

Bored and a little overcooked, Morty considers letting a suntan-oiled leg slip off his towel and onto the original paint job. There’d be hell to pay, but it would probably get them out of the fucking Fort Lauderdale K-Mart Outlet Mall and somewhere with AC and wi-fi again.

Before he gets quite the level of necessary stupidity together to do it though, the most conspicuous black SUV he’s ever seen pulls into the parking lot beside them. Rolling his eyes under his sunglasses, Morty leans back further, preparing himself for another quarter hour of Rick making up for the petty fucking power play that’s clearly happened.

Staring at the cloudless blue sky, he hums to himself as he listens to the conversation behind him. It’s in Spanish, and moving more rapidly than is easy for him to understand, but hearing Rick’s pissed off voice when it isn’t directed at him is always a treat to be savored.

Eventually he hears the tell-tale sound of a zipper, and sits up, watching a black leather bag fall open to reveal a pile of rolled dollar bills, none of them in denominations lower than a twenty. Standing and stretching again, Morty pushes his sunglasses up on his head and starts to roll up his towel.

He catches one of Mateo’s men watching and winks in his direction. The man flushes angrily and turns to Rick, sneering and muttering something that Morty’s able to pick up this time.

He’s still a little hazy on some of his conjunctions and conjugations, but the teen’s able to put together the gist of it pretty quickly.

 _‘Looks like your_ (informal you) _whore…_ something something _… now_ something (is that the verb for 'to smell'?) something  _money.’_

Making a semi-educated guess, Morty smirks and shakes his head. “Oh I’m not up for the money.”

Four sets of eyes and a pair of mirrored shades all turn to face him.

“I’m just up to watch the show.”

Putting on the best accent he can, Morty tosses his towel in the back seat of the Cadillac and sidles over to stand beside Rick and the satchel of cash. _“Ya la cagaste, Cabron.”_

The last syllable hasn’t left Morty’s lips before Rick pulls his gun and puts a hole through the guy’s head. Morty immediately ducks and grabs the bag of money, and books it back around the Cadillac to jump in. The car is already in motion before he manages to get the passenger side door closed, as Rick tears out of the parking lot.

Two of the four goons are still alive, stumbling towards the SUV as they go, but Morty grins as they take off, clutching the leather bag to his chest. They have the money, the coke is still in the trunk, Rick got to shoot somebody that had pissed him off, and best of all it hadn’t been Morty.

Thank god for that, whenever Rick patches him up these days the new skin never matches his tan.

“You impressed, Rick?”

“With what,” Rick asks, turning on the freeway. “ Your pathetic attempts at Spanish?”

Morty grins, setting the bag on the floor between his legs. “For a start, sure.”

“Congratulations,” the older man says dryly, “You’ve done the bare minimum for two years in a city where more people speak Spanish than English.”

Rolling his eyes, the teen resists the urge to show off a few more of his choice vocabulary words. “My pronunciation was perfect though.”

“You speak Spanish with a Cuban accent,” Rick says dismissively, attention focused on the three identical black SUVs pulling up behind them.

"What’s wrong with that?” Morty frowns. “Wait, what do you speak it with then?”

“You wanna impress me Morty?” Rick asks rhetorically, “Reach under the seat and deal with the heat you brought down on our asses.”

Morty reaches under the passenger seat to pull out a collapsible Bazooka, and lines up the shot.

The central of the three SUVs erupts into blue flames as soon as he pulls the trigger, its tires melting into the asphalt in seconds as tinted windows explode from the unnatural heat. Its twins slow dramatically, trying to gage the new range of their unlikely pink prey.

Gleefully, Morty lets the empty rocket launcher fall onto his towel in the back seat, steaming with residual heat.

“How’s that, _Papi chulo_?”

“Not horrible. Keep trying.”

 

* * *

 

Turns out Mateo might have kept his operation out of Miami, but he seems to have no problem mustering every man and cliched dark SUV, unmarked sports car and motorcycle at his disposal right on the border, ready to put the jump on Rick while still safely half a state away.

They’d managed to lose most of them, and creatively take out a few of the rest. Morty had even gotten to drive the Cadillac for a short stint, slamming his bare foot to the floor on the accelerator while Rick jerry-rigged an electro-slingshot out of bits of junk from his pockets, the glove compartment, and the rubber thongs on Morty’s flip-flops.

But three hours later the thrill of the chase has definitely worn off, the last dregs of adrenaline leaving a sour aftertaste in Morty’s mouth. The sun has almost set, through you can’t see much of a horizon through the miserable swampy forest they’re parked in. They’re half an hour outside of Orlando, on some dirt road three turns off the freeway that’s earmarked for development into yet another outlet mall.

Morty thinks it can’t come soon enough as he swats at another mosquito buzzing by his ear and goes back to trying to untangle the mess driving 120 up the turnpike with the top down has made of his hair. The wooded niche they’re tucked away in is probably used by highway patrol taking a nap, barely visible except from head-on, but with a decent view of the crossroad where another black Escalade rolls menacingly back and forth every ten minutes.

They’re almost in the heart of Mateo’s operation now, it’s unlikely he’ll run out of reinforcements any time soon. Rick doesn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry though, just sitting and watching the patrols drive past, a mounting pile of chewed toothpicks growing on the mud beside them.

It had been kind of fun, really. It’s been a while since Rick took him somewhere that required running for their lives, and it’s nice to know that his reflexes (and his aim) haven’t suffered too much for it. Just for a little while they’re Rick and Morty again, off on adventures that would turn most people’s hair white.

The difference is this, though. These quiet moments after the running and shooting have ceased.

Back home, _before_ , there had always been the disconnect. Two worlds, cemented in place and clearly divided by the opaque green wall of a portal.

There was the world of adventures. Most often literally alien worlds, full of danger and excitement, shot through with terror and confusion. But there were also the rare and precious moments of wonder, and hints of something with Rick that resembled camaraderie. A world of color and noise and movement so dizzying it was often more exhausting than thrilling.

And then there was the real world. Good old Earth, where the most confusing things were the math quizzes he hadn’t studied for and the only hints of violence came in the form of his parents’ nightly sparring matches across the dinner table. The world where Rick ceased to be a guide, a partner in crime, a mentor of sorts, and became a kind of robot, moving from one pre-programmed spot to the next; table, garage, couch, and repeat.

Worst of all, it was the world of silence.

Silence, echoing through the house after a slammed door to a study or his parents’ room.

Silence, filling the garage like a carbon monoxide leak until Rick punctured it at the last breathable second to ask for Morty to pass him a tool.

Silence, circling Morty’s bed like vultures as he lied there, realizing for the third time in a week that he hadn’t spoken a word to another living soul in twenty-four hours.

This silence was different though. It felt like a strange mix of the two worlds Morty had found so incompatible in his old life.

Once again running and fighting for their lives, but on Earth instead of some unknown planetoid a billion miles away. The bright colors of the Cadillac and their Florida attire out of place in the dim and dismal swamp around them.

Once more the fucking quiet, but this time with a different tension than the one that felt like it was going to strangle him alive a little more every day he endured it.

So Morty talks.

“You know what I couldn’t stop thinking about back there, Rick?”

It’s an inane starter, but Rick doesn’t bother with snappy retort, still drumming his fingers against the wheel and staring out at the road with his usual barely contained energy.

“I was thinking,” he continues casually, “About ducking for cover and seeing how much of your dick I could shove down my throat before we got shot or crashed.”

Still no response. Morty throws finger-combed hair back over his shoulders and slides closer to Rick obviously, leaning in to speak lowly in his ear with the conspiratorial tone of a practiced stripper.

“I give the best blowjob in Miami. And you already paid me for it, remember that?”

The drumming fingers don’t lose their pace, but the toothpick bobs with aggressive movements. Morty plucks the mangled stick from Rick’s lips and flicks it into the mud casually.

“I sure remember it…” The teen slides his hand down to rest conspicuously on Rick’s thigh. “I’m sure we could come up with all kinds of creative ways for me to make up the interest.”

Rick’s hands stop drumming, his knuckles going just a little bit white on the wheel.

Morty leans in and kisses Rick again. This one isn’t light, and coated with the chemical sweetness of cherry candy lip balm. It’s insistent, sour with dehydration and sweat and the frustration of two fucking years with no progress.

And for a fraction of a second, Morty can swear on his fucking life, Rick kisses back.

It isn’t a sneer of disgust curling his lip, or an annoyed pursing of his lips, or any of the other possible muscle reflexes that could possibly occur, it’s an honest-to-god press of Rick’s lips against his own, and Morty doesn’t think he’s ever felt anything more life-affirming in sixteen goddamn years until the leather of the seat gives way beneath his weight and he shifts an inch or two to feel something unmistakable brushing against his forearm.

Rick is hard.

Rick is hard and it isn’t hyperbole to say that everything in Morty’s life for the last two, three, hell, _the last sixteen years_ has been leading up to this moment.

Every ounce of control he’s tried to build into his new life snaps in an instant, dried up and blown away as he crawls into Rick’s lap with plenty of muscle memory but zero finesse.

He grinds against Rick less for the stimulation than for the confirmation that yes, that isn’t a portal gun or a screwdriver or a fucking roll of quarters, Rick is indeed it seems, very much happy to see him. His hands land on Rick’s shoulders and dig into that ridiculous fucking lab coat, and he half-moans, half-whimpers, refusing to pull himself away from Rick’s mouth long enough to draw a full breath.

Rick’s hands finally, _finally_ move off the steering wheel to land on his sides, and Morty wants to moan again as his fantasies are validated. Rick’s hands totally do wrap almost all the way around his waist, and it’s _perfect_. But then the hands and pushing him back, away from his unbelievably hard-fought prize, and Morty realizes it’s because Rick is speaking.

“What are you doing?”

Licking his lips unselfconsciously, Morty speaks without hesitation. “You told me to keep trying.”

He doesn’t just mean today, of course. He’s proudly letting Rick know that he heard his unspoken challenge that night in the diner. That he understands why he’s getting this now, and not before. He hadn’t earned it yet.

Rick had told him to aim higher. And here he finally was.

For the first moment since Rick had started to kiss him back though, Morty has the nagging feeling that something, some detail in this scene is less than perfect.

He sees his own face reflected in the darkened mirror of Rick’s aviators, and he knows what it is. He wants to see those paradoxically ice blue and burning eyes, focused on him again.

It’s not enough that Rick sees him now, sees what he’s offering and its value.

He needs to see Rick see him.

Morty’s hand reaches for the frames, but Rick’s is faster. Those long, strong fingers wrap around his wrist, and hold it in place.

“Jesus, Morty,” Rick says flatly. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Frowning, Morty pulls his hand back but Rick doesn’t release it, squeezing nearly tight enough to bruise.

“You’ve always been desperate for my approval, but at what point in your life did the wires get crossed to equate approval with dick? What, did Jerry pull some shit when I wasn’t looking? Is that why you ran away?”

Dumbfounded, Morty yanks his arm free, and this time Rick lets it go.

“Fuck you, Rick.”

Rick doesn’t respond, a-fucking-gain, and Morty feels anger and humiliation start to burn in the pit of his stomach.

“Fuck you.” He repeats. “You wanna talk about needing approval? What about how you need my fucking approval, huh?”

Crawling off of Rick’s lap feels like a victory as much as making it on it had three minutes ago.

“You drag me all over the goddamn multiverse so you can have someone to marvel at your bullshit, then ignore me until you need someone to hand you a fucking screwdriver that you could build a robot to do in ten minutes. A-a-and then!” Morty winces as his forgotten stutter makes an unwelcome appearance. “When I leave you fucking follow me halfway across the country and set up shop in all the parts of my life you think need your fucking fingerprints on them, because you still need a trophy to parade around town and see first-hand how goddamn important you are.”

Morty pauses for breath, grinding his teeth furiously.

‘Well congratulations Rick, you did it. You’re important to me, you fucking asshole. Good job punishing me for the shit you caused.”

Rick’s attention turns back to the road.

“Get out.”

Morty doesn’t question whether he’s serious, just angrily wrenches open the passenger door.

“You better hope a fucking gator gets me before one of Mateo’s guys does.”

Rick turns and pulls a roll of bills from the black bag in the back seat, and chucks it at Morty without looking. Morty catches it automatically, scowling as Rick turns the key to bring the Cadillac back to life.

“You better hope so too now.”

“What makes you think I won’t just give it back to him and sell you out anyway?” Morty shoots at him acidly, shoving the roll of bills inside his leopard coat and slamming the door closed again with more force than is called for.

“You won’t,” Rick says calmly, flicking the headlights on low.

“I’m not so fucking shallow I’m willing to die for the price of Saturday shopping spree.”

“Nah,” Rick glances down at the ground and Morty is suddenly aware of the cold mud squelching between his toes. “I just don’t think you’re going to walk back to Miami barefoot.”

And before the teen can come up with another parting shot, the Cadillac pulls away, turning off the access road and onto the main streets. The headlights fade into nothingness, until Morty is left standing alone in the clearing, shivering as night air starts settles around him.

Forty-five minutes later he climbs into the backseat of a car, heading home.

For the second time in his life he makes the trip from Orlando to Miami alone, but this time the car is from a rented limo service, complete with a driver that holds the door for him and doesn’t question the mud on his legs and gas-station flip flops.

On the way home he calls his boss from the car phone. He’s done playing Rick’s game.

 

* * *

 

Rick doesn’t return to Miami for two full weeks. Morty hears all about it when he does, there’s no way for him to really escape the gossip with the company he keeps.

Apparently Rick burned a path from Orlando to Tampa that razed the ground and salted the earth for not just Mateo’s gang, but anyone who ever worked for him as a middle-man, money launderer, or small-time dealer.

The FBI, DEA, and the ATF are swarming, and the stories say they’re spending most of their time trying to match body parts to blood stains, and sending out desperate missives to the rest of the world trying to ID what caused the unfamiliar scorch marks that cover the three block radius where Mateo’s family had lived.

The whispers are terrified and pervasive: despite the massive power vacuum that’s been created by a single man, no one is stepping in to fill it.

Rick Sanchez is now the undisputed drug kingpin of the entire state of Florida.

Morty stays away from the warehouse, the beach houses, the apartment buildings. There’s a less than zero chance his security clearances have been wiped anyway.

A couple of the girls at the club ask him if he can still get them drugs after Rick gets back, and Morty just shakes his head. They look at him sympathetically, nodding and murmuring about the latest horrible rumors, assuming Morty’s cut ties out of fear and horror at the atrocities Rick’s smeared across the state. Sure, he’s always looked the other way, been protected from some of Rick’s more pointed ‘messages’, but it makes sense that now he’s gotten out, gotten clean from that vicious psychopathic old fuck, no matter how good his coke is.

Morty really couldn’t give a fuck what Rick does, but it’s an easy enough out, so he just nods and says he doesn’t want to talk about it, and life moves on much the same as before.

With one notable difference, looming on the horizon.

After he’d made his decision and that initial phone call to his manager, he’d been dragged into the man’s office a few times and peppered with questions. Morty had just told him that yes, he was serious, and that he didn’t really care about the details. He trusted his boss to handle all the arrangements well enough for a thirty percent cut. After ten minutes of excited babbling, Morty had cut him off.

“How long?”

“To get the word out properly? Maybe... six weeks?”

Standing and heading for the dressing room, Morty countered. “Four weeks.”

The days tick by, and the crowds at Morty’s dances grow by the hour. He stops taking ‘private VIP dances’ in the back rooms, even with his regulars, but it just seems to help build his mystique.

At the end of the night he goes home to his shitty apartment, smiles at his roommates, and disappears into his room with a bottle of vodka, marking another day off on his calendar until he’ll be free.

It’s been twenty-nine days and seventeen hours since he last saw Rick, and hopefully by the morning he’ll be able to stop counting.

He fiddles with a loose string on the edge of his skirt as he stands in the wings. The hotel is nice, upscale, four star, a business hotel that doesn’t look twice at renting out a hall with a stage and a few floors of rooms for a Friday night. He can just barely see his boss’s back as he warms up the crowd, laying down the ground rules for the evening as the emcee.

_“...all for coming, as we all know it’s our beloved Morty’s twenty-first birthday this evening…”_

Morty doesn’t need to see the air-quotes and wink to appreciate the wave of amused chuckles that rolls through the crowd. None of them think he’s twenty-one. How old they actually think he is varies depending on what they want to believe.

_“...be auctioning off an overnight stay in the winner’s suite with our very own…”_

His palms are sweaty. They haven’t been sweaty before a dance since his first night on the job. Of course his clarity of purpose had been easier then. He knew why he was doing this then. Tonight he has to keep reminding himself. Beyond the curtain the emcee starts to wrap up his opening remarks.

_“And as a final reminder, all bids placed this evening will be collected, not just the winning bid. So in for a penny, in for pound, right gentlemen? Remember… This is for charity.”_

Another wink and knowing laugh from the audience. Morty hears his introduction, the opening bars of some song he hadn’t bothered to choose beginning to play. He strolls out, and the crowd goes wild, cheering and catcalling as he makes his way to the temporary pole installed on the stage.

He’s known for his bright colors, his candy kisses, but tonight he’s wearing all black. Classic heel and fishnets, matched with a little black dress that’s secretly a two-piece, starting to reveal its nature as he twists and contorts, flashing glimpses of skin at the waist.

It’s not a mourning dress. It’s just mature. Sophisticated.

Tonight is about casting off the old and embracing the new, just like he did two years ago in a ratty yellow t-shirt and jeans.

Morty moves through the practiced motions of his dance without much thought, lost in the back of his head.

It’s fine, no one here is actually going to bid based on how he dances tonight.

The song comes to an end as Morty slides into his signature move, and he’s dimly aware of a standing ovation.

Collecting his top and skirt, he walks offstage again, watching his boss hurry out to quell the disappointed clamor of the audience.

_“Now now folks, our star is a little shy. He’s off to get ready for our grand prize winner, so shall we get ready to start the bidding? We wouldn’t want to keep him waiting, would we?”_

Pulling his clothes back on, Morty doesn’t stay to eavesdrop on the auction. Even if he ends up getting ripped off by his manager it doesn’t matter. He’ll still make enough to set up shop anywhere he wants and be set for years.

Maybe this time he’ll actually go to California. Make the last two years of his life an extended detour on his original plan. A life of freedom, away from his family, his old life, and most importantly, away from Rick. Florida was just a cocoon, and he’s almost ready to break out and fly away.

Just one more night first. One last tether to snip.

He takes the elevator to the penthouse and lets himself in, heading straight for the minibar.

Once he’s in California he’s never going to drink again. Never going to do any of the unhealthy shit he did in his old life. He’ll take up yoga, and eat organic crudites.

But tonight he downs four overpriced two-ounce bottles, one right after the other, and settles in to one of the overstuffed armchairs that looks out over the city, waiting for the door to open.

It shouldn’t take too long. His boss had asked if he wanted a heads up on who had won before they arrived, a sneaky text message or a phone call to the room, but Morty hadn’t really seen the point. His reaction is going to be the same no matter who it is.

_'It’s you… I knew it would be… you always were my favorite, I can’t believe you get to be my first…’_

He closes his eyes and thinks about California. Malibu, maybe. Or Venice Beach.

It’s less than ten minutes later when the lock on the suite door clicks and swings open. Morty opens his eyes and sees the reflection of mirrored sunglasses in the polished glass of the window.

“Hello Rick.”

Morty doesn’t move from his chair, but Rick enters and follows the same direct path he had to the minibar, emptying it of the dark liquors the teen had left behind.

“Let me guess,” Morty ventures, staring back out at the city lights again. “You scared off the winner. Or shot him in the head. Because you don’t want me, but nobody else can have me. Did I get that about right?”

He’s so tired. He’s spent three years of his life playing this game, he just wants to stop.

Rick settles into the other chair with a rocks glass and faces out at the overpriced view as well, silently.

Of course it was never going to be that easy. Nothing with Rick ever was. It’s not enough that’s Morty’s accepted that he’s lost, Rick has to have his moment to gloat, even if it’s in silence, or by undermining Morty’s last move.

“Did you actually throw down your own money to keep me?” The teen asks rhetorically, nodding a little to himself.

“Yeah, that sounds more like you. A lot easier. I’m sure I cost less than beach mansion number thirty-something.”

The clink of Rick’s empty drink on the glass table between them is followed by another softer metallic sound.

Glancing over, Morty sees a folded pair of sunglasses sitting neatly beside the empty rocks glass. Rick is still gazing at the city, but even his bare face in profile is enough to draw Morty’s practiced attention, as it was clearly meant to.

The seconds stretch on, and for a minute, he’s fourteen again, waiting for Rick to deign to speak to him across a garage or a the table of a crappy diner.

Morty had promised himself he was done waiting for Rick. But here he was again. Backsliding into old habits. A constant reminder that he wasn’t going to ever break free. Anger stirs in his stomach, more at himself and his own weakness than at Rick.

“I’m leaving.”

Rick finally speaks. “Where will you go?”

For a minute Morty wonders if Rick has misunderstood him, meant leaving the suite, the job, the city… when what he’s really trying to leave is Rick. But it works either way. Where the fuck is he gonna go?

“California.” Morty says, letting the truth slip between his teeth before he knows he’s started to form the word.

Nodding a little, Rick purses his lips. “I hate California.”

“Good,” the teen snaps, “Don’t follow me then.”

Morty pushes himself out of his chair, teeth already gritting against the hot pressure behind his eyes he refuses to admit are tears. He’s managed to get the door to the suite in sight when Rick speaks again.

“Five hundred thousand dollars.”

He freezes, painted nails digging into the plush back of the chair as he steadies himself.

“You slapped down that much to keep me tonight?” Morty barks out a short, terse laugh, feeling the fabric dig into his nail beds. “Fuck Rick, you could have gotten away with half that and no one would have questioned how big your dick is.”

Rick shrugs, and the motion turns into a fluid stretch as he rises to his feet, rolling his head from side to side with an audible crack.

“California is expensive.”

“So it’s what,” Morty feels rage start to bubble in his stomach again, overwriting the sea of other anxious emotions that have made a home there. “A parting gift? Hush money? An apology for dicking me around for the last three years?”

“Why, is it not enough?” Rick’s tone is darker, less neutral, but he moves at a leisurely pace around the chairs to come to face Morty.

With every step he takes Morty feels that sickening mixture of anxiety start to pound a little harder. His eyes are still dangerously hot and tight, one his hands balled into a vibrating fist at his side, the other doing its best to match its mate with a chair back in its way.

The door to the suite feels so far away.

He hasn’t been afraid of Rick, properly afraid, in years, but right now his mind is telling him that even if his legs held up beneath him, running would be a very, very bad idea. He knows how fast Rick can move. He knows the things Rick does to people he considers traitors.

And those are people Rick didn’t even give a shit about in the first place.

Rick comes to stand in front of him, not technically between him and the door, but close enough that he could reach out and grab Morty without even having to lean, the tall bastard.

There’s another one of goddamn pauses, as Rick waits for Morty to make his move.

Taking three more measured breaths, Morty wrenches his eyes from the hallway door and up to meet Rick’s eyes.

And there they are. Still ice blue and piercing, burned into his memory and reinforced by a hundred nights of masturbatory fantasies and nightmares. The intensity in them is still like staring into a sun, and Morty is certain he has his own matching deer-in-headlights look to reflect back at them.

But Morty suddenly realizes his own, horrible mistake.

There’s a quality to Rick’s gaze that he’d always ascribed as simply a fundamental part of their nature. One that he only recognizes now by its complete and utter absence.

There is no anger in Rick’s eyes.

Instead there’s an openness and depth of emotion that makes Morty unsteady on his feet again.

Rick looks… exposed.

Christ, no wonder he always wears the glasses.

“Isn’t it enough Morty?” Rick repeats, smirking that trademark smug bastard look that Morty can now see doesn’t reach all the way to his eyes. “You think you’re worth more? After all, I only offered you five hundred last time."

Morty has to know.

Leaning forward he pushes himself up on the toes, and gently presses his lips against Rick’s. Neither one of them closes their eyes for the brief duration of the kiss, but as Morty leans back to rest on his heels he watches in absolute wonder as he’s able to catalogue the emotions playing through Rick’s eyes like the screen in a drive-in movie theater.

_Affection. Amusement. Lust. Possession._

Those are the ones that make Morty’s insides swoop and dip down, finally setting from their tumultuous boil to a low simmer in his groin and a pulsing warmth in his chest. But there’s another set of emotions lurking behind them, less overtly obvious perhaps, but they may as well be shining with the flashing glare of a lighthouse beacon for all that they attract Morty’s focus.

_Contrition. Vulnerability. Fear. An all too familiar Fatigue._

But there’s one that Morty can’t put his finger on as the seconds drag by and his heart beats harder in his chests.

He'd almost call it _Resignation_ , a match for the fatigue and Rick’s general demeanor, like Morty’s worn him down to the point he may as well let whatever happen tonight happen.

But that isn’t right.

It’s _Acceptance,_  Morty realizes.

Whatever he chooses here, Rick will go along with it.

If he walks out the door and doesn’t stop until he makes it to the Pacific Ocean, Rick won’t lift a finger or say a word to stop him.

But, at the same time, he knows it won’t be a month before Rick turns up like a bad penny, refusing to be removed from the background of his life like a watermark on a bootleg, inconveniently reminding him of his origins.

Maybe he’ll get into the import/export business, smuggling shit from Asia through the California docks. Or maybe he’ll end up in something less savory, like music production.

But Morty has no doubt that Rick won’t hesitate to walk away from everything he’s built here over the last two years. Tens, maybe hundreds of millions in cash, property, drugs. He’d abandon territory he’s killed at least a hundred people to claim, and would probably be indirectly responsible for dozens more lives lost in the vacuum that he’d create.

He can see it though. Clear as a bell. Rick throwing a duffel bag of cash and liquor into the back seat of the Cadillac and just driving out of town, heading across country to follow him.

Or not even that. Just stepping through a portal and never looking back, the same way he apparently had two years ago to find Morty outside a dingy warehouse club he marked as his new home.

“How much am I worth, Rick?” He barely breathes out the question, not tearing his eyes away from Rick’s face, searching for any hint of dishonesty.

Not a single emotion on Rick’s face so much as flickers from its place as he shrugs.

“All of it.”

Morty can’t help himself anymore. He lets go of the chair and almost falls into Rick’s chest, grabbing at the lapels of that ridiculous coat and staring up at him.

“Then show me.”

Rick doesn’t hesitate, reaching down to wrap his hands around Morty’s waist and lift him. Morty’s legs wrap around Rick’s waist with the practiced ease of a pole-dancer, his hands still clenched around his grandpa’s coat as he adjusts to the newly accommodating angle by kissing Rick desperately.

It’s not their first kiss, but it feels like it. It feels like the first real kiss Morty’s ever had, as Rick matches every ounce of his desperate energy, redirecting it skillfully with his lips and tongue in ways that have Morty’s blood flowing south faster than he knew was physically possible.

A dull shock runs through his back and spine, and he realizes that Rick has carried him to the wall, slamming him against the tastefully boring cream wallpaper as he slides his hands down to squeeze at Morty’s ass. Groaning at the manhandling, Morty digs his heels into the dip at the bottom of Rick’s spine and grinds against his stomach, the short edge of his skirt tenting and flapping obscenely. 

He’s always been the instigator, the one copping a feel or making indecent proposals of Rick. To have him finally take control, take possession of what’s been on offer for years doesn’t feel strange at all. It feels fundamentally right, and more satisfying than Morty could have anticipated. Plus, he thinks, breaking away from Rick’s lips with a gasp and letting his head slam back against the wall to catch his breath, Rick already makes his way down the side of his throat, it has the added benefits of getting to take advantage of Rick’s decades of considerable experience, all of which seem to be intent of puddling his brain out of his ears before he even gets to take his damn top off.

Rick growls as he noses away the long blonde hair standing between his teeth and Morty’s throat, and Morty lets all fantasies of riding Rick until his legs give out vanish into a box in his head marked ‘for later’, accompanied by all concepts of higher thought. Rick’s teeth sink into his neck and he gasps, holding on for dear life as he enjoys his long-awaited reward.

It doesn’t take long before Morty’s a squirming, wriggling mess, grinding against Rick with an awkward off-tempo rhythm he’d be ashamed of on any other night. Still, he’s seconds away from trying to find the brain-to-mouth coordination to explain to Rick that, technically, this is still his first time, and if Rick doesn’t stop what he’s doing Morty is going to absolutely come in his panties like the teenage virgin he is, when Rick, blessedly, horribly, ceases his assault.

Panting hard, Morty flings his arms around Rick’s neck and lays his head on his shoulder as the older man starts to move, heading towards the massive king-size bed that’s the focal point of the suite.

But instead of finding himself thrown on crisp, white, high thread-count sheets, Morty feels the world spin again behind closed eyes, and one of Rick’s arms disappears from its rightful place around his waist as they start to move again.

Whining a little in protest, Morty cracks an eyelid just before he’s unceremoniously dropped on the floor again, nearly rolling an ankle as he scrambles to get his heels underneath him. Before he can figure out what’s going on though, Rick’s hands return around his waist and shoulder, and he once again finds himself slammed against a flat surface.

This time however, it’s the cool glass texture of the wall of windows, and Morty moans as he feels Rick slot into place behind him, emanating glorious heat and sandwiching him firmly into place.

His skirt is hiked up obscenely, pressing his erection flat against the smooth surface of the window, with far too little friction offered by the smooth silk of his panties. One hand had automatically come up to meet the glass as he was hurled towards it, fingers splayed across it to leave an obvious, Titanic-style handprint for the maids to find the next day. Morty has the ludicrous thought that his dad might be happy about that little detail of his first time, before Rick grinds his covered hard-on against his nearly-bare ass and every thought that isn’t about that vanishes from his head.

Morty’s other hand hangs awkwardly at his side, and he moves to try and free his aching cock from the confines of its silk and elastic prison, only to feel Rick’s fingers wrap around his wrist and bring it up to match its mate.

Groaning in frustration, Morty grinds back against Rick, not caring that he’s basically meeting the level of a bitch in heat, and Rick, being the utter bastard that he is and has always been, steps back.

“Keep your hands on the window.” Rick brings spoken language back into the room for the first time in what feels like hours, and Morty nods desperately in acknowledgement.

Pulling firmly on Morty’s hips until he takes a step or two backwards with each leg, Rick murmurs something low that sounds like approval, and Morty curses the pounding in his ears for making him miss it.

He knows exactly how good he looks like this, it’s a position he’s taken more times than he can count against the back wall of a stage, bent in half with his already excellent ass enhanced by the lift of his heels, spine arching as he throws a look over his shoulder at whatever lucky sap in the audience is in the right seat that night.

Maybe that’s where Rick got the idea, but Morty doesn’t have to crane his neck to see what Rick’s doing from here, he can keep his eyes on Rick’s face in the polished reflection of the window, breath catching whenever Rick meets his indirect gaze.

Rick’s hands slide up his thighs and pull down his underwear, smirking slightly as Morty groans at the newfound air around freed erection. The teen moves to raise one of his ankles to let Rick slip them all the way off, but Rick holds his leg in place. Groaning, Morty realizes he intends to leave his legs shackled by the panties around his knees.

Any thoughts about what that means for him disappear as Rick’s hands move again, one deftly undoing his own belt and zipper. Morty’s eyes snap to follow it, his forearms shaking with excitement more than strain, but of course it’s a fucking misdirect to distract him from Rick’s other hand sliding around to wrap around his cock.

A noise that sounds like he’s being strangled drags its way from Morty’s throat, and his hands try in vain to scrabble for purchase against the frictionless glass before Rick clicks his tongue chidingly and Morty remembers he isn’t supposed to move them.

It’s probably so he doesn’t fall flat on his face and ruin everything, but as Rick’s obscenely large, warm hand strokes up and down his length to flick a thumb against that bundle of nerves beneath his head, Morty can’t entirely convince himself that it’s about anything other that Rick’s goddamn power trip.

But then he feels another hand sliding along his flank, hiking his skirt up even further, and he suddenly realizes why Rick had supposedly changed his mind about the bed. He’d just been collecting the bottle of lube placed prominently on the nightstand.

Rick slides a finger in seamlessly, and Morty finds his voice.

“Fuck, Rick, _Please_ …” He begs brokenly, his voice already raspier and sounding more fucked out than he’s ever heard it before. “I need it so bad, fucking fuck me, please, _Rick_ …”

The hand around his dick disappears and Morty nearly sobs in disappointment before he feels another finger join the first and slam down with precision accuracy against his prostate. He nearly comes on the spot anyway, a shriek of pleasure ripping through his throat as his whole body shakes.

Rick finger-fucks him mercilessly, dragging gun-calloused fingertips over his most sensitive spots again and again as Morty’s brain short circuits, feeling his dick leak pre-come in a steady stream onto the hotel carpet.

Morty’s vaguely aware of his other senses. He can hear embarrassing wails that must be coming from him, can see his own blown eyes reflecting back at him before the distant colored lights of Miami. But his perceptions of time, of up and down, or anything else in the room around him have all skewed to revolve around the fingers inside him and the condensation forming under his palms on the glass against him.

Then the fingers disappear, and Morty doesn’t even mourn their loss for the chance to breathe, to take stock and realize what’s coming next.

He can hear Rick’s breathing now too, rough and uneven, and he tries to catch a glimpse of his face in his improvised mirror, but his face is turned down, laser-focused attention all on his grandson’s perfect ass.

This is it. This is exactly what Morty’s wanted for years. Rick is going to fuck him, and his first time isn’t going to be on silk sheets or soft beaches, but like this, bent over like the whore he is against a window for all of Miami to see, and it’s _perfect_. Rick can survey everything he’s claimed as his own in one perfect view, and Morty hopes some of the sad fuckers he calls his loyal fans are outside on the street to look up and watch his crowning triumph.

Rick’s cock slides against the crack of his ass, smearing pre-come amongst the lube and Morty has just enough time to smugly confirm he hasn’t worn a condom before Rick thrusts and Morty swears he can feel it in his toes.

They moan together this time, as Rick fucks in and out slowly a couple of times, tightening and loosening his grip around Morty’s hips as he does.

Morty whines at the slow pace, and Rick seems to interpret it correctly because he suddenly starts to fuck him faster, deep and hard enough that Morty has to keep himself from rolling forward on his heels and press back hard against the glass.

Rick seems to have found his voice again with the faster pace, and Morty hopes to god that Rick always talks while he fucks, because the shit dripping from his lips is better than any masturbation fodder Morty’s ever had in his life.

“You’re fucking _mine_ now you demanding little shit, you wanted this so goddamn badly well you’ve got it, I’m never gonna let you go a fucking day without taking advantage of this sweet ass and that smart fucking mouth…”

Nodding vigorously in agreement, Morty whines and arches his back as best he can. Rick takes advantage of the cascade of hair flowing down his back at the movement to wrap a hand around it, wrenching the boy’s head back and changing his angle so that it drags against Morty’s prostate with every upward thrust.

“I’m gonna fucking brand my name on your slutty ass,” Rick hisses in his ear, pistoning his hips faster and squeezing harder at Morty’s flank. “Let everyone who fucking comes near it know who they’re going to have to answer to now if they so much as lay a finger on you without my say-so..”

Morty nearly chokes on his own spit, trying not to drool as his eyes roll back in his head at the onslaught of sensation and imagery.

“Yes, fuck yes, Rick, yours, only yours…”

“Fucking _mine_ ,” Rick growls in agreement, releasing Morty’s hair and reaching back down for the teen’s neglected erection.

Even if he’d had the capacity for the emotion, Morty wouldn’t have felt the slightest bit of embarrassment at how quickly he comes under Rick’s touch. In less than half a dozen strokes he’s coming hard enough to white out for a second, certain he’s only held upright by Rick’s arm around his waist and the press of his weight against the window. His release is violent enough to spray against the window some three feet in front of him, and as he comes back to his senses he realizes he keening with oversensitivity.

Rick’s thrusts are already starting to lose their rhythm though, and he’s cursing lowly under his breath. Morty has just enough time to find Rick’s reflection in the glass one last time and meet his eyes before his grandfather comes with a growl.

It’s the most beautiful thing Morty’s ever seen.

All too quickly though Rick is pulling out, and Morty’s arms and legs start to wobble dangerously. He’s distantly aware of the sound of Rick zipping up his pants before the Earth moves again as Rick picks him up and carries him bridal-style to the neglected bed.

Humming contently, Morty manages to wrap his arms around Rick’s neck and refuses to let go until the older man huffs in amusement and lies down beside him.

Exhaustion, spiked by a month of near-sleepless nights starts to fade in around Morty’s mind, but he fights it as best he can, snuggling into the warm of Rick’s chest and trying to find a neutral topic of conversation in this new landscape.

“Did you really pay half a million dollars for me?” He asks absently, toying with the top button of Rick’s shirt.

There’s a pause above him, before Rick hedges. “Yes and no.”

Morty doesn’t respond, content to wait in the silence until Rick is forced to explain.

“I didn’t so much bid tonight as much as I… bought out the club a couple months ago.”

Humming thoughtfully, Morty takes in the new facts.

“The morning you scared the shit out of my manager?”

Rick grunts an assent.

“So I’m guessing you’re ok with me still working there,” Morty yawns. “Wait, does that mean you got to keep all the bids from the auction tonight?”

“One point three million dollars,” Rick replies, answering the question Morty hadn’t yet gotten to.

Snickering, Morty jabs a still boneless finger at Rick’s collarbone. “You made a good deal for me then.”

“Considering I bought you for a plate of hash-browns two years ago, I’d say so,” Rick replies. “Now go to sleep.”

Morty tries to come up with a witty retort, but he feels the welcome creep of unconsciousness steal the words before he can think of them.

It’s fine. He’s got time tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading through! I appreciate each and every one of you, and if you'd like to leave a comment I promise I will adore it and most likely respond to it (eventually).


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